


Skaihefa: The King In Exile

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:29:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kane and Abby's newfound happiness after they find love in Polis doesn't last long.  After the coup fails, Chancellor Pike locks up every member of the Resistance, throwing Kane into solitary confinement.  Meanwhile, in Polis, Lexa is shot and nearly killed in a coup d'etat that leaves her and Clarke (as well as Kane, rightful leader of the 13th clan) in grave danger, with a price on their heads.  Trapped between Pike's armed Farm Station guards and Ontari's approaching army, the chances of rescue seem bleak - until an unexpected ally steps in to shelter Kane (with Abby at his side) while he and Lexa rally an army to take back their thrones.</p><p>Sequel to "Haiplana" - http://archiveofourown.org/works/5875519</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prison Break

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Haiplana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5875519) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin). 



He was always cold.

It wasn’t so bad during the day, because there was a skylight in the high ceiling that occasionally got enough sun to warm the room a few degrees and make it more bearable. But after dusk the chill set in, creeping into his bones and refusing to let him go.

They’d given him a blanket, true. And the mattress on the floor could have been worse. But he was too old to sleep night after night on cold metal, with nothing but a few inches of padding between him and the floor, and a whisper of threadbare wool to block out the frigid, metallic air, without consequences. Every morning he woke up and his back was a little stiffer.

They’d moved him to solitary confinement after the coup failed, locked up in a dusty, forgotten corner of the ship under 24-hour watch. It had once been a classroom, he vaguely remembered, though they’d emptied out all the desks and chairs long ago. Now it was a cold gray cube, so large that there always seemed to be a draft even though he could never figure out where the air was coming from; though he supposed it was better than feeling claustrophobic. Nobody but Farm Station guards ever came near – twice a day with trays of food, and every three days to escort him at gunpoint to the showers – which meant no information. His guards were under orders not to tell him anything, which meant he didn’t know what had happened to the others.

He’d kept careful track of the days. Today was twenty-five. Almost twenty-six, in fact, since it was after midnight and he started tracking at dawn. He’d become the kind of person who woke and slept with the sun – they all had, down here on the ground, where suddenly things like the movement of the sun _mattered_ in a way they hadn’t on the Ark – and because he was alone with nothing but his thoughts all day, there was nothing keeping him from lying down on the thin mattress as soon as he’d finished his dinner and trying to fall asleep.

“Trying,” of course, was the operative word. For a man with very little to do except sleep, he rarely slept well.

Because, of course, it wasn’t just the bad mattress. It wasn’t the surly guards or the inadequate food or his bad back or the chill. It wasn’t just the echoing metallic silence of his new prison threatening to drive him insane, or the clenching fear in his gut about what had happened to all the people who’d followed him into danger, whether they’d all been tossed back into the brig or whether something had happened that was infinitely worse.

It was something, actually, much simpler than that:

He didn’t know how to sleep alone anymore.

The irony of this wasn’t lost on him, and there were times when he could even be amused by it. He was forty-three years old and he’d slept alone his entire life up until exactly nineteen days before Charles Pike had locked him up here, alone with nothing but a blanket and a mattress in this gray cube that used to be a classroom. And those nineteen days had undone the work of a lifetime. He couldn’t fall asleep on this thin, stiff mattress because Abby wasn’t with him.

He knew she was alive, but that was all, and even that was by accident. He’d overheard a guard's radio through the door; someone from Farm Station had attempted to take the Rover on a scouting expedition and the Grounder army – under Lexa’s kill order - had attacked. The group had made it back alive, but someone had been injured, and the guard outside his door had been paged to go alert Doctor Griffin.

That had been five days ago.

Abby was alive five days ago. That was all he knew. That was the only thing he had to hold onto.

He lay on his thin cotton mattress, struggling – as always – to find a comfortable position. If he lay on his side, his hip pressed sharply through the thin padding against the cold floor and he awoke with stiff joints, but he could curl up a bit at least. He was too tall for this mattress by nearly a foot. He tossed and turned and shifted all night long, but it almost didn’t matter; he’d wake up stiff and unhappy anyway, no matter what he tried.

Abby’s bed was always warm, and there was room for him to stretch blissfully all the way out to his full height, to take up half the bed if he wanted to. But he never did. She’d asked him, smiling, the first night after they’d returned from Polis and he’d come to her quarters, whether he had a preference on which side of the bed he liked, but in the end it never mattered. They slept in the middle of the bed, arms and legs tangled together, infinite empty space surrounding them, an island of warm skin in the center of a nighttime sea, and it didn’t matter if he fell asleep with his elbow at a strange angle or Abby’s nose digging into his chest because the heat of her soft small body, pressed naked against his own, drew him deeply and sweetly into the most perfect sleep every time. And it wasn’t just the sex, it wasn’t just the way she made him feel, the way she looked up at him with those wide brown eyes as he held himself above her and she tangled her hands in his thick dark hair. It wasn’t just the way it felt to come inside her and then sink down against her warm golden skin, breathing in the smell of her sweat as he held her close and felt her breathing ease back down from shuddering climax into peace and stillness again. It was so much more than that.

It was the way it felt, finally, after forty-three years, to let someone in.

He’d had it for nineteen days, since that first night in Polis when his defenses had fallen and he’d no longer been able to hide how desperately he wanted her. Nineteen days of waking her up in the morning by pressing soft kisses on her sun-dappled skin. Nineteen nights of losing himself inside her, going dizzy at the sound of her faint, frantic cries while he stroked her between the thighs with his mouth and hands.

And then everything had fallen apart.

So here he was, lying on his back on a mattress that was too short for him, feeling the chill from the cold metal floor begin to seep through, staring up at the tiny patch of stars he could see through the skylight, holding onto the fact that five days ago Abby had been alive and well.

He didn’t know where she was right now.  He didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the Resistance – Lincoln and Octavia, Sinclair and Harper and the Millers. He didn’t know whether they were alive or –

He stopped himself here, as he always did, refusing to entertain the possibility of all the people he cared about, dead because of him.

 _No,_ he told himself firmly, as he stared up through the grimy glass at the sprinkling of stars hanging over the trees. _Hope is everything._

Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, Abby would not have given up. He knew that. There was nothing she could do to rescue him – they’d had her under surveillance already, even before the coup, so by now she was probably under armed guard to keep her away from the others – but as long as she was alive, there was a chance someone could get through to Bellamy. There was hope as long as there was Abby. If he’d learned nothing else since crashing to earth, he’d learned that.

She’d taught him what hope was, a thing he’d never had time for in the past. A thing he’d believed useless, a crutch for the feeble-minded. He’d fancied himself so pragmatic then, a man who believed only the things he could see in front of him. A man with "a strength unweakened by sentiment," Jaha had told him once, thinking it was praise.  A man with no time for anything as flimsy as hope.

But Abby's hope, he'd discovered, and the magnitude of it had startled him, was not in the least a flimsy thing.  It was the solidest, stubbornest force he knew, and it had come to his rescue over and over.  How many times had Abby's faith - in him, in her daughter, in the ability of human beings to be their best selves when it was most required of them - kept them all alive?  And how many catastrophes, how many of the stains on his conscience, could have been averted by just a flicker of that hope, if he'd only listened?  If he'd believed Abby that the 100 were alive on the ground, those three hundred and twenty innocent people - good, brave people, the kind of people willing to sacrifice themselves to give their children three more months of oxygen - would never have died in Section 17.  And they needed people like that, here on the ground; if even half of them had made it to Earth, had settled in Arkadia, it would have turned the tide of the election.  Or what if he'd decided to trust Bellamy Blake right away, that very first day, like he should have?  What if he'd taken the boy under his wing instead of locking him up?  Finn Collins and a whole village of Grounders would still be alive, and he wouldn't have to live with the memory of what he'd done to Abby every time his hands slipped around her waist and up her bare back, brushing the uneven ridges of her shocklash scars.

So many times, over and over, his cynicism had been wrong and her faith had been right.  So he wouldn’t make the same mistake again this time. He’d tried once to overthrow Pike and failed. But he was alive, at least, which meant there was still a chance.

He watched the stars for awhile longer, letting his mind go pleasantly blank, trying not to think about the button on his jacket that was pressing into his ribcage, trying not to think about the cold, trying not to think about where Octavia was right now, or Lincoln, trying not to think about how many people might have gotten hurt because he’d failed them.

Trying, instead, to think about hope.

Because he didn’t want to live in a world where he only got to hold Abby Griffin in his arms for nineteen days before losing her forever.

So he looked up at the stars, and he wondered if his mother’s God was out there somewhere, looking down from the sky at His children on the ground, and he prayed that if his own unsteady faith wasn’t enough to get God's attention, that maybe hers would be. That maybe wherever she was, she could hear him, and could lift her son's feeble prayer up high enough that it had a chance of being heard.

“Please,” he found himself murmuring. “We need a miracle.”

He had asked this before, more than once.  He had begun, of course, with action - the moment they'd locked him into the room he'd begun desperately trying to find a way out of it.  It only took him until Day 2 to realize it was impossible.  He'd tried strategy, after that; he'd thought and thought and thought, he'd gamed out every possible scenario for escape (fake an illness, fashion a weapon from his dinner utensils, make a break for it when the guards brought in his meals) but had rejected them all as fruitless.

So he'd wound up, by day twenty-five, with nothing left but prayer.

This was not the first night he'd looked up at the night sky and thought about God and his mother and prayed to whoever might be listening - if anybody was - for a miracle.

But tonight – rather astonishingly – he finally got one.

It began as a creaking sound, like straining metal. He wondered confusedly if it was the wind, if there was a storm outside, even though the star-sprinkled sky appeared crystal clear. For one terrible, heart-shattering moment he thought it was the station itself, that the central ring of Alpha Station had somehow inexplicably lost its center of gravity and that Arkadia was falling apart. But it wasn’t either of those things, he realized about half a minute later, as a glowing white line inexplicably appeared in the wall across from him. It began low, where the wall met the floor, and moved upward, then angled sharply right, then down again, and maybe it was because he’d been alone for twenty-five days that he didn’t figure out until the absolute last second that somebody with industrial welding equipment was cutting a hole in his wall.

The shock of the creaking metal crashing into his silence, and the shock of a white-hot metal blowtorch slicing an unexpected doorway in his prison cell, however, were nothing compared to the shock of the figure that ducked its head inside as the panel lifted away.

“Come on,” said a voice he had secretly feared he might never hear again, beckoning at him urgently. “We have eighteen minutes to get you out of here and weld this shut before the patrol comes back this way.”

But he couldn’t move. He just sat up in his bed, staring blankly at her for a long moment, and then he said her name.

_“Clarke?”_

* * *

Things happened very quickly after that.

The initial astonishment of his entirely unexpected salvation at the hands of the person he least expected to see was followed by so many other incomprehensible revelations that Kane eventually just stopped thinking. Clarke’s urgency seemed to indicate that there was little time for questions. So as he crawled on hands and knees out the low opening - careful not to touch the still-smoking metal with his bare skin - he didn’t even blink an eye as a crouched shape disentangled itself from the shadows and moved towards them. A voice in the back of his mind murmured that perhaps the only sight _more_ surprising than Clarke ducking her blonde head into his prison cell was that of a bruised and battered John Murphy, holding the blowtorch that had so abruptly liberated him.

Murphy gave him a halfhearted wave and then knelt down in front of the opening to lift the panel back into place and neatly solder it closed.  “Sixteen minutes,” Clarke said to him, and he gave her a sarcastically emphatic thumbs-up to indicate he’d heard. “You all set?”

“I don’t know how many times you want me to promise you I’m not gonna fuck this up,” he muttered, “but I swear to God, Clarke, I remember the plan, okay? Just go.”

“Hey,” said Clarke firmly, and Murphy paused for a moment to turn around and look at her. “Thank you,” she said, “for everything,” and among the many things Kane didn’t have time to ask questions about now but very much wondered was how on earth it had come to pass that these two, of all people, were looking at each other with something intimate and dark passing between them, like fellow survivors of a disaster. He didn’t know how they’d found each other again, or when, or where, but it was clear that it hadn’t been good. John Murphy’s face had been bruised the last time Kane saw him, but not like this.

“Go,” Murphy said again, still flippant and dismissive but with something a little vulnerable underneath it, and Clarke nodded, leading Kane away.

She answered the first of his unasked questions as they crept through the shadows, sticking close to station’s exterior walls, protected by the heavy dark shadows. They were on the other side of the camp from the fire pit and the kitchens – there was nothing back here but storage – so they didn’t pass anyone on their way. But she kept her voice low anyway, just in case. “Murphy’s going to seal the wall back up before the night patrol comes back around this way,” she said. "The way the shadows are angled, they won’t be able to see the scorch marks. If our luck holds, nobody will realize you’re missing until the morning guard rotation brings you your breakfast, and we’ll be hours away by then.” She stopped suddenly, hearing a sound, and held up a hand for him to stop too. It was remarkable how quickly he snapped back into it, following where she led. They'd always been a good team.

Finally, satisfied that it had only been the sound of one of the horses getting restless in the stable, she gently touched his hand for him to follow her and continued on. “They’re all still alive,” she added. “All your people. Pike locked them up in the brig, and Lincoln got beat up pretty bad, but everyone’s okay.”

“They won’t be for much longer,” Kane pointed out gently, “once Pike realizes I’m missing.”

Clarke grinned at him unexpectedly. “They get their breakfast at the same time as you,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “At the moment they realize your cell is empty and someone helped you escape through the wall, every single plausible suspect will be sitting politely in the brig with their bowl and spoon, and the guards will be able to attest that nobody went in and out all night.”

“Nobody knows you’re back,” he whispered, the beauty of the plan suddenly dawning on him. “Or John Murphy. Nobody even knows you’re in the camp.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Everyone’s accounted for. They’ll have no idea what happened.”

They came around the corner of the ship just then, the camp’s outer gates finally in sight, and he’d held out as long as he could without asking the only question in the world he really wanted the answer to, because he didn’t know what he’d do if the answer was “no” and Clarke was the one who had to say it to him. But he couldn’t stand it another minute. So he placed a hand on her shoulder, abruptly stopping her in her tracks. She turned to him, a little impatient – they were in a hurry, they were so close – but she softened at the anguished look in his eyes, and he could tell she knew.

“Clarke,” he murmured, “is she still – is she – “

“Kane,” she began, putting a hand on his arm to calm him, and he shook his head.

“I have to know,” he said desperately. “I can’t – if she didn’t – I can’t leave if – “

“Marcus,” whispered a soft, low voice from the shadows beneath the wall, and a heartbeat later, Abby was in his arms.

“Nine minutes,” he heard Clarke murmur warningly, but there was a hint of a smile in her voice, and anyway he didn’t care, because Abby was _here,_ she was alive, she was safe, and the knot of panic that had kept him awake for twenty-five nights dissolved in an instant because he knew all the way down to his bones that this was the miracle.

He didn’t kiss her, because he knew once he did he’d never be able to stop and they didn't have that kind of time, but he clutched her tightly in his arms for a long, long moment before Clarke said, “Mom, we have to go” and he pulled reluctantly away. “You can do that later,” Clarke added, with a hint of amusement in her voice. “When I’m not watching. But it takes three and a half minutes to get the wall panel unscrewed and we’re still on the clock. Let’s move.”

“Sorry,” said Abby with a ghost of a laugh, her voice wavering a little bit as though she were trying not to cry. “I got carried away.”

“What wall panel?” Kane asked as they made their way stealthily through the shadows to the high metallic bulk of Arkadia’s exterior walls.

“There’s a panel in this section that’s not soldered to the others,” Clarke explained. “All it takes to pry it loose is a screwdriver.” She waved them over to a flat expanse of dented metal about two feet wide and six feet tall, which had clearly been used to hastily patch the remaining gap between two formidably massive sections of Ark salvage that didn’t quite meet in the middle.

“I didn’t know that,” said Kane, astonished. “I supervised the building of this wall, and I didn’t know that. So how the hell do _you_ know that?”

“We had a little help,” said Abby, and even though her tone was light there was some strong emotion wrapped inside it, and that was the first moment Kane realized that Abby wasn’t looking at him. She was looking _behind_ him, somewhere over his shoulder. So was Clarke.

“Six minutes,” said a voice behind him, and Kane felt his heart stop beating as he turned around to see Bellamy Blake, standing in front of him with Raven’s toolbox in his hand.

He stared.

“It was his idea, Marcus,” said Abby gently. “Bellamy’s with us now.”

“If Pike finds out -"

"He won't," said Bellamy with more conviction than he probably felt.  "And I don't care if he does.  I'm getting you out of here."

“If you’re gonna talk, talk with a screwdriver in your hand,” said Clarke impatiently, and Bellamy opened the toolbox to hand tools to Clarke and Abby, taking one for himself.

“There are sixteen screws,” said Abby as they worked. “We timed it in the last drill at three and a half minutes. We tried to narrow it but we couldn’t get a fourth screwdriver without raising suspicion. Raven only has three in the box, and Farm Station has the storage rooms under lock and key.”

“Drill?” Kane repeated, a little stupidly, a torrent of questions echoing in his head as Clarke, Bellamy and Abby worked in perfectly-rehearsed unison to swiftly and silently pull the screws out of the metal panel, but he was afraid to distract them, so he didn’t say any more than that until Abby pulled the last screw out and Bellamy lifted the metal panel away from the wall, opening a door that led down the sloping, grassy hill to the forest below, and freedom.

“Here,” said Bellamy, “you’ll need these,” and pressed something small and sharp into Kane’s hand.

It was the keys to the Rover.

“I took it to the dropship,” he said. “Octavia’s there waiting, with supplies and maps.”

“Bellamy,” Kane began, then stopped. There was too much to say.

“Two and a half minutes,” said Clarke. “He’s got to set the panel back in place and hide until the guard patrol passes. Everybody out.”

“Go,” said Bellamy firmly. “Before anyone sees you. Go. I’ll take care of everything.” His voice was tight, his fists clenched at his sides, and Kane could feel the barely-contained emotion coursing through him. “I’m gonna fix this, sir,” he said to Kane heavily. “I know I fucked up, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I promise I’m gonna fix this.”

The man Marcus Kane used to be would have nodded gruffly, turned and made his way out the door to safety without a look back. But the man Marcus Kane was now took two long strides and wrapped Bellamy Blake in his arms. The boy resisted for a long moment, stiff and tense and desperately unhappy, but Kane didn’t let him go. “You are not a monster,” he said softly, feeling something inside Bellamy collapse at the words. “We have all done terrible things. What matters is what you do to make it right.” He pulled away just enough to look Bellamy in the eyes, holding him firmly by the shoulders. “I’ve done terrible things too,” he said. “All of us have. We all have blood on our hands. We were always only trying to do the right thing for our people. That doesn’t undo our mistakes, but it does keep us human. You’re not a monster, Bellamy,” he repeated. “And I never lost faith in you.”

“Ninety seconds,” said Clarke, not unkindly, so Kane let Bellamy go, took Abby by the hand, and led her out through the open metal panel to the safety on the other side of the wall.

“I have faith in you too,” he heard Clarke say, and turned to see her lean up on her toes to plant a soft kiss on his cheek, and then watched as Bellamy’s arms wrapped tightly around her for just a moment before letting go. Even by the faint starlight, Kane could see that both of them were crying.

“Go,” said Bellamy, and Clarke nodded, swallowing hard, and followed her mother and Kane out of Arkadia as Bellamy replaced the metal paneling behind them.

Once the wall was closed back up, Clarke knelt down to the ground to carefully dig through what looked like a heap of scrap lumber to retrieve the three backpacks it had been carefully concealing from view.  "Take this," she said, "we've got a long walk," and Kane felt his heart flip over inside his chest because _he knew that voice._   Brisk, decisive, thinking on her feet. She was _herself_ again.  She’d been someone else when they'd found her in Polis, the title of Wanheda hanging over her like a heavy dark cloud, dulling the sparkle of her eyes.  And she’d been so shattered by her confrontation with Bellamy during her last fleeting visit to Arkadia that she’d been a numb, distant shell of herself. But _this_ was the Clarke Griffin he knew. She had brought Bellamy back to the light and found the only weak spot in Arkadia's impregnable exterior wall and sprung him from prison with no help but a delinquent with a blowtorch, and he suddenly couldn’t stop himself from wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tight, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. She was startled for a moment, uncertain, but after a heartbeat her arms came up around his back and she let her head rest, just for a moment, against his comfortingly solid chest, before pulling away and handing him and Abby two of the backpacks.

“Where are we going?” asked Kane as he shrugged his on, took Abby's hand and they followed Clarke down the hill to the forest below.

“Dropship,” she said as she walked, a little evasively. “Octavia’s there with the Rover. If we hurry, we’ll make it before the sun comes up. We need to be long gone before they realize your cell is empty.”

“No, I meant after,” he pressed her. “Why do we need the Rover?”

Clarke paused and turned back to him, the bright veneer of insistent confidence beginning to fade the faintest bit, and he realized they’d reached the part of her plan about which she was, perhaps, ever so slightly uncertain.

“There was an uprising in Polis,” she said, almost defensively. “There's a lot to tell you.  Lexa was almost killed. There’s a new Commander, a woman named Ontari, and she doesn't recognize Skaikru's membership in the Grounder Alliance.  None of us are safe. Lexa and Indra and Octavia are headed to rally support from Luna’s people, and from all the remaining Trikru that are loyal to Lexa, but you and I have a bounty on our heads, and we need to lie low until Lexa can come up with an army to take back her throne and help you defeat Pike. And there aren’t many people left I trust, so our options were . . . limited.”

“That’s not an answer,” he said. “Clarke, _where are we going?”_

She swallowed hard, exchanging an uncomfortable look with her mother, before turning back to him. “To the only place Charles Pike will never, ever go looking for you," she said, and he felt his stomach turn over in his chest.

“Clarke – “

“Wanheda ste shoun op gon Azplana Marcus, Skaihefa, heda fousen kom thotinon kru-de,” she said darkly, and from the grim set of Abby’s jaw he could tell that she didn’t like it any more than her daughter did.

_Wanheda comes to the King of the Ice Nation bearing Marcus, Sky King, rightful leader of the thirteenth clan._

She was taking them to Azgeda.


	2. Road Trip

Octavia’s map to the city of Azcapa – eight hundred and ninety miles away – estimated the trip at about nineteen hours, but it ended up taking closer to twenty-seven.  Lexa and Indra had done the best they could, but the routes they knew best were meant for riders on horseback, not four-wheeled vehicles, and the journey took them through every conceivable variety of landscape from farmland to forest, nearly all of it rough.  Slow progress forced them to stop and make camp halfway through, since Kane could barely keep his eyes open and he was the only one who could drive the Rover. Octavia rode out with them on horseback as far as the border of Sector 8 before turning around to make her way back.  Her mission was to accompany Indra and Lexa to the capital of the Boat Nation to find Luna and convince her to help them muster an army; Indra was waiting with the former Commander near Tondc, and they were set to leave at first light.

They parted ways at the border; Octavia embraced Clarke and Abby, and even submitted (with fond eye-rolling) to a hug from Kane.  Then they watched Helios gallop away over the dark fields until Octavia was out of sight, all of them wondering under what circumstances they would see her again.

Clarke rode in the back of the Rover while Kane drove, Abby beside him in the passenger seat. They’d given him the bulk of the story on the walk from Arkadia to the dropship, so the baffling circumstances of his rescue began, finally, to make some sense. He hadn’t seen John Murphy since the day he disappeared from camp with Jaha all those months ago, and Clarke’s secondhand recounting of the tale of how he’d passed the time – about the City of Light and the A.I. who destroyed the world and the backpack Jaha wore and the nomad Grounder girl who had saved him – astonished him completely. He felt sick at the thought of leaving Jaha among their people, with no one to stop him, now that they knew what they knew.  But Clarke was right; they faced many dangers, but the most pressing was the Grounder war that was coming their way, to stop which they would need to depose both a Chancellor and a Commander.  As gratifying as it was to know there was now concrete proof that Abby had been right all along about the dangers of those sinister little blue chips, dealing with Jaha was going to have to wait; because the second part of Clarke's story was even more staggering than the first.

Marcus Kane knew the story of Polaris.  His mother had told him it was a myth, a rumor; she had believed in Unity Day, she had always believed the best of people, and she could scarcely credit the notion that the government of the Ark would blow a manned space station out of the sky to intimidate the others into compliance.  But Diana Sydney had heard the story from someone at school and told Marcus and Marcus had told Thelonious and Thelonious had asked his father who had said it was all true.  He learned a little more, as he grew older - there were classified documents in the Council files the rest of the Ark didn't know about that made other bits and pieces of the story clear - but the notion that anyone had survived it, or that it could possibly be connected to their lives down here on the ground, would never have occurred to him.  Yet as Clarke recounted the story of how the 13th station and the Grounders' religion had revealed themselves, startlingly, to be connected, his thoughts lifted away from the immediate concerns about the dangers they were all in and for a long moment he could only marvel at the wonder of it.  Technological reincarnation.  Everything Lexa had believed was, in an entirely unforeseen way, true.  He was fascinated by it, full of questions, and only wished he'd had the chance to ask Lexa about it while it was still inside her.

Which, at the moment, it wasn’t.

The awe and wonder with which Marcus heard that chapter of Clarke's story quickly faded at the horror of the next one.  There had been a _coup d'etat_ in Polis, and very nearly an assassination.  Lexa's fanatically-devoted mentor Titus had convinced himself that Clarke's influence over Lexa was destabilizing the entire alliance, and her presence at the Commander's side a threat to everything they held dear.  Titus knew Lexa too well to think that having Clarke killed would force the Commander to listen, but he loved her too much to let any harm come to her.  So there was only one solution - depose her as Commander.  

This, however, was easier said than done.  Once the A.I. was implanted, it stayed grafted to the Commander's brain stem until they died, at which point it would release its biolocking mechanism so the Flamekeeper could disconnect it, with the Commander's memories intact, it to transfer to their successor following the conclave.  And so, when Lexa awoke from the stupor inflicted upon her by a heavy dose of Grounder poison that simulated a death-like state, slipped into her water glass by Titus, she found herself locked into her bedroom with a panicked, grief-stricken Clarke, and no real idea who or what or where she was.  With the chip gone, she was no longer the Commander; she’d been young when she had been chosen at the conclave, and had spent so long with the voices of the other commanders inside her mind that she was frightened and disoriented without it. She was alive, mercifully; but in terms of a meaningful contribution to helping them escape from a locked room at the top of her tower, she was useless.

And so, as Clarke explained, oblivious to the tight, anxious look on her mother’s face (the story had clearly not grown less harrowing for Abby to hear in its second telling) – they'd been forced to go out the window.

With the help of a knotted rope of bedsheets and a great deal of luck, they'd made their way down the jagged, crumbling exterior of the tower and found a room three or four floors down that seemed to be deserted.  Intending to duck inside and make a run for the stairwell without being caught, they'd been startled to find themselves face-to-face with a bedraggled and bloodied John Murphy, tied to a chair in Titus’ private study.  Lexa was beginning, by now, to come bit by bit back to herself, and though the absence of the Commanders' voices inside her head still left her feeling empty and disoriented, she remembered where she was, and could guide them through the tower to a back stairwell that led to an underground hallway.  From there they could make their way undetected out of the city.  They'd stopped only to rally Indra, the only person left Lexa could trust, and formulated a plan on the way.  Indra would take Lexa to hide out in Lincoln's cave, near Tondc, while Clarke and Murphy would sneak back into Arkadia.

They'd arrived there three days after Kane's arrest, and Clarke had gone first to Octavia, who'd found hiding places for both her and Murphy to conceal themselves inside the camp.  Pike and Bellamy still hadn't discovered Kane's secret exit, so Octavia was free to sneak in and out as go-between, passing news from Clarke to Lexa and Indra, and returning with the latest reports from the handful of of riders in Polis that still remained secretly loyal to Lexa.  This was how they learned that Ontari had emerged victorious from the conclave, seizing the throne and declaring the thirteenth clan to be banned from the Grounder Alliance.  She placed a staggering bounty on the heads of both Lexa and Kane, and an even higher one upon Wanheda (who was to be captured alive so Ontari could kill her herself and claim her power). The conclave had been a particularly bloody one, and Heda Ontari had faced no difficulty in bending the clans to her will, exacting vows of fealty from all of them.

All of them, that is, except Azgeda.

Maybe it was because, as much as Roan had disliked and distrusted Lexa, he disliked Ontari more; he'd thought none too highly of his own mother, after all, so he had no particular reason to be fond of her Nightblood second.  Maybe it was because Ontari was Ice Nation, and he was reluctant to bow down before one of his own subjects.  Maybe it was Azgeda's long, bloody history of resisting any and all alliances, deigning to join Lexa's only under the far greater threat of the Mountain Men.  Or maybe it was the simple fact that Azgeda's territory stretched for a thousand miles and contained a large number of densely populated cities very nearly the size of Polis, which meant his own army was larger than anything Ontari could muster even from all the eleven remaining clans, and he knew her ambition and self-interest would keep her from declaring a war against him that she would surely lose.  Whatever the reason, King Roan had refused to sign the treaty, but Ontari had not moved against him.  Clarke believed - with something that was a bit closer to blind faith than certainty for Kane's personal comfort - that Roan still trusted her, and that if she could only reach him, she could convince him to ally with Skaikru and Lexa's army to depose Ontari from the throne.  But for the plan to work, Skaikru needed a leader who would reclaim their title as the thirteenth clan, a leader who could rally his people to fight alongside Grounders as their allies in a Grounder war. 

Which meant that suddenly, the most important person in a thousand-mile radius was Marcus Kane.

“Roan was the first to kneel,” Clarke reminded him. “He met you. He watched you take the brand. He’ll recognize you as King of the Sky People. If we can offer him a beneficial alliance, we can persuade him to send us an army to help depose Pike.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Kane. “Our best plan for peace is to ally with the Ice Nation to overthrow a democratically-elected leader who won by campaigning on the fear of Ice Nation.”

“I’m still working out the logistics,” said Clarke dryly, “but I’m open to better ideas.”

But Kane, of course, didn’t have one, so into the heart of Azgeda they went.

* * *

 They’d parted ways with Octavia just before dawn and driven through the morning, breaking a few times to stretch their legs.  Clarke had dozed off for a few hours in the back of the Rover, but Kane was fading fast, so they pulled over to the side of the road around noon to conceal the Rover amidst a stand of low, scrubby trees.  Clarke thought it safest, on the whole, for them to stop during the day and keep moving at night, so she climbed onto the roof of the Rover to keep watch until dusk while Kane and Abby climbed into the back and curled up on the rough pallet on the vehicle's cold metal floor.

Kane cradled Abby in his arms with the desperation of a man afraid that he'll wake up and find this was all a dream, while Abby held him tightly, burying her face in his chest, like a woman who knows that at any moment the people you love might get up in the night and leave you.  They were too weary, too drained, too weak with relief at their reunion, to do anything more than sink instantly and heavily into their first real sleep in twenty-six days.

They woke at sunset, ate a hasty meal, and Kane took the wheel again as Clarke traded off to sleep on the pallet in back while he drove.  Their progress over the rocky, rough terrain was slow; they’d long since passed through the low, rolling fields of the borderlands and left behind the vast forest at the heart of Azgeda, and had now crossed into the dry, cold hills at the base of the snow-capped mountains that gave the place its name. They were eight hours from the city, according to the map, and would hit snow in about five, which was good since it would be light by then. Kane drove in peaceful silence for awhile, the headlights shining along the flat expanse of gray rock, fragmented here and there with stripes of yellow, that had once been a road. It was smoother here than it had been before, as the vehicle jolted and clattered its way through field and forest along footpaths and horse trails.  Abby, who had always hated the Rover, flinched every time the wheels hit a bump, and relaxed visibly the moment they reached the paved road that would take them all the rest of the way. 

They looked out the windows at the night, watching the dim headlights of the Rover sweep through the darkness in front of them.  They were content, for a long time, not to talk. It was enough that they were safe, that Clarke was safe, that they were together. It was enough that there seemed, finally, to be a glimmer of hope. The night was cold and clear, the sky crowded with stars, and the higher they climbed on the flat gray road, the sharper the air in their lungs felt. It was a different kind of cold from the chill of his prison cell; this was a cold with freshness and life in it, a cold tinged with the scent of green things, and Marcus Kane wondered if he’d ever get tired of discovering all the things there were left to learn about the world they now called home.

“You haven’t asked me anything,” Abby said suddenly, startling him out of an hours-long silence.  He didn't answer, unsure quite what she meant, but she wasn’t criticizing him. Her voice was gentle, as though she understood (the way she always understood) exactly what he was thinking.  “You had a thousand questions for Clarke,” she pointed out. “About the size of Luna’s army, about the Commander chip, about the conclave, about John Murphy. What you haven’t asked yet is a single question about what happened to your people after they took you away.”

“Because I don’t want to know,” he said roughly, surprising himself with the words far more than her, his fists clenching the steering wheel so hard his knuckle turned white, and she nodded as though this was the answer she’d expected.

“Right,” she observed. “Because you’re convinced that everything that happened was your fault.”

“It _was_ my fault, Abby. All of it.”

“Marcus, haven't you wondered why you’re not dead?” she asked him frankly, and until she said the words out loud he realized - rather shockingly - that he actually hadn't.  “Pike could have killed you, but he didn’t," she went on.  "He didn’t kill anybody. Not Octavia, not Nathan Miller, not Sinclair, not Lincoln, not even me. He was willing to lock everyone up, but he didn’t harm a hair on our heads. Didn’t you ask yourself _why_?”

He didn't answer, or take his eyes off the road, but she didn't seem to expect a response, and continued in a gentle, sensible voice.  He could feel her looking at him, from her seat at his side.  He could feel her whole body grow somehow sharper, more concentrated, the energy radiating off her.  She was trying to tell him something important.  And when she looked at him like this, it always turned out that the thing she said to him was something he needed to hear.

"If you're afraid you lost to Pike because you're still the man you were on the Ark and your people will never let your forget it," she told him, "if you're reproaching yourself for your own failures because they put the people around you in danger - then you don't understand what actually happened."

"We lost the election, Abby," he said.  "I pushed for it, and then we were both outvoted.  That's what happened."

"But not for the reason you think," she told him.  "It wasn't because you _failed._   It was because in that moment, our people found more comfort in a message of fear and anger than a message of peace and hope.  And Pike took that power and ran with it.  But he knows the tide could turn at any time.  It wasn’t a landslide victory. He’s holding onto that Chancellor pin by the skin of his teeth. It’s because you’re _you,_ Marcus, it’s because of who you are to these people, that Pike knew he’d never keep Arkadia on his side if he executed you. Or me. Or anyone else in the Resistance.  Fine, maybe some of them have a hard time trusting Lincoln, who's a Grounder, or Harper, who's a thief, but everyone who fought at Mount Weather trusts David Miller.  And for God's sake, _everyone_ on the Ark knew Sinclair.  These people aren't outsiders, and neither are you and I.  We're the ones who have been here, building a community, building a _home_ , for months before Pike showed up. They’re our people, yours and mine, and we haven't lost them.  We'll get them back. Pike may be the one with the title, but the citizens of Arkadia won't stand by and watch their chancellor shoot Marcus Kane or David Miller or Octavia Blake in the head for treason.  He'd never be able to shut down that uprising, he doesn't have nearly enough people on his side.  Not anymore.  Bellamy's with us now, and Monty Green, and who knows how many more will follow.  On that day, in that election, after what happened at Mount Weather, a lot of our people were persuaded to make a very bad decision. But if you think for one moment that Pike could have shot you and gotten away with it, you’re wrong. I know it, and Pike knows it.  He's afraid.  He knows how close he is to all of this falling apart.  You may think that it’s because of the mistakes you made that the coup failed and your people were arrested,” she went on gently, “but the reason everyone made it out alive is because of who you are. It’s because of everything you’ve done since we landed on the ground to gain our people’s trust. And we might have lost it for a moment, but we’ll get it back. I promise.  You're not the reason we were locked up, Marcus, you're the reason we all lived.”

Marcus didn’t speak for a long time.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he finally said, the words tumbling out of him almost reluctantly, as though he were confessing something shameful. Abby nodded, unsurprised.

“Me neither,” she said. “Not for a single night since you left.” She smiled at him a little sadly. “I got used to the sound of your breathing,” she confessed. “It was too quiet in that room without you. I couldn’t get used to the silence. It felt empty, somehow.”

“I was cold all the time,” he said, staring straight ahead at the road and trying not to think about that gray box.

“It’s over,” she told him, reaching a hand up to caress his hair, and something inside him shattered.

“Abby,” he whispered, his voice rough and raw, because her touch felt so good and they hadn’t been together in so long and the further away they drove from the dangers behind them, the more layers of emotion – panic first, then confusion, then relief, then curiosity, then exhaustion – fell away, leaving nothing in their wake but how desperately he loved her. Twenty-six nights of pent-up desire, of thinking about her, yearning for her, wanting her . . . and finally, here she was.

“Marcus,” she murmured back, and he couldn’t help himself then.

He stopped the car.

She looked at him, eyes dark and wide. “We can’t,” she said, shaking her head, gesturing at the heavily-sleeping Clarke in the back seat of the Rover.  Kane didn’t answer, but opened the door and stepped out onto the road, closing the door noiselessly behind him.  After a moment, Abby followed.

Once the headlamps of the Rover switched off, it was pitch black. Marcus took Abby’s hand, feeling through the thin skin of her wrist that her pulse was racing, and guided her off the side of the road. As their eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he spotted a large, flat boulder, surrounded thickly enough by trees to give them the feeling of privacy – though it was hardly necessary, since Clarke was sound asleep – while still keeping the Rover safely in view.

Not until they were both seated comfortably on the side of the flat, low expanse of smooth rock did the dam burst, as Kane finally, finally, kissed her.

It had been a long, cold, lonely four weeks for both of them, so they were ravenous for each other, and they still had to drive all night to make their way to Azgeda, so they knew there wasn’t a great deal of time. This would not be the kind of slow, languid lovemaking they’d become used to, that first night in Polis and the nineteen nights that followed in Abby’s warm bed. This was something new, something hard and rough and desperate, and Marcus Kane had never felt more alive in his life.

His mouth crashed into hers, his hands tangling frantically in her hair before sliding down to roam all over her body. He slid his palms up the soft skin of her belly to unhook her bra inside her shirt so he could clutch hungrily at her breasts, making her gasp with pleasure as the hard little points of her nipples brushed his fingers. He pinched them both as he nuzzled his rough beard deeper and deeper into her neck.

“My kid is fifty feet away,” she laughed breathlessly, “you can’t make me scream.”

“Bet I can.”

She laughed again. “I know you _can_ ,” she corrected herself, gasping a little as his tongue grazed rough and hard up the side of her neck. “I just don't think you _should._ Let's save it for somewhere more soundproof.”

“It’s been twenty-six days, Abby,” he groaned into her neck as her hands slipped inside his shirt to press hotly against his bare back. “I can’t make you any promises.”

There wasn’t time to undress. There wasn’t time to go slow and be polite.  There was only time for Abby to unbutton her jeans and push them down off her hips, watching hungrily as Kane did the same, and lie back against the flat, cool surface of the stone, holding out her arms so he could sink inside them.

When he entered her, it was as though a wrong thing had suddenly, unexpectedly righted itself, as though the entire world clicked back into place and the anguish of their twenty-five nights apart fell entirely away. She was soft and supple beneath him, hips rising to meet his, open and ready and looking up at him with dark, sparkling eyes, and he loved her so much he thought he might die of it.  “ _Ai hod yu in, Haiplana_ ,” he murmured into her hair, unable to stop himself, as she sighed and moaned and pleaded for more beneath him, clutching wildly at his back with desperate fingers as he rose and fell inside her.

 _“Ai hod yu in, Haihefa,”_ she said in reply, and even after all this time the sound of her speaking Trigedasleng in her low, alluring voice sent shivers all over his body.  They knew there would be time, later, once they reached the Ice King’s tower, to do it properly – for him to kiss her body all over and bury his face between her thighs, listening to her soft fluttering cries of pleasure; for her to tangle her fingers in his thick dark hair and gaze down at him forehead to forehead as she sank slowly down onto his lap and felt him surge up inside her.  But it was enough, for now, just to be together. They didn’t care that the rock was cold, or that their movements were constricted by too many clothes. They only cared about the way it felt to merge into one again, to know that the sleepless nights were over, to feel the pleasure of each other’s bodies as the icy starlight flickered against their skin.

Marcus felt Abby begin to come, felt the pressure begin to rise up inside her, and pulled away just enough that he could look down into her eyes. He loved her like this, the soft startled O of her mouth as her lips parted and her eyes went wide, as though she was surprised by it every time. To everyone else she was a doctor, a chancellor, a mother, a fighter. She had so many labels. She had so many walls. But it all fell away, when Marcus was inside her, when she was simply Abby, gazing up at him with love in her eyes and sighing his name.

And he, Marcus. Who was he, to the others? He lived behind walls too. He was a man who’d done terrible things, a man atoning for blood-soaked hands, a man who had tried to be Chancellor more than once and failed every time. No one had ever looked at him and seen hope before.  No one had even seen a good man.  Abby was the only one.

Maybe _that_ was love, he thought, as Abby trembled in his arms. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you show your true selves only to each other.

And as he came deep inside her, burying his face in the soft skin of her shoulder to muffle his cries so the sleeping girl in the car wouldn’t hear – it was the only thing he could say.

“I love you,” he murmured desperately into her throat. “I love you. I love you.”

And she held him close as the stars shone down, cradling him against her chest and stroking his soft dark hair.


	3. Bounty

They were less than a mile from the Ice Keep when Abby disappeared.

They’d driven all night and into the morning, making good time, and Roan’s fortress was in sight – a grand, crumbling stone building at the crest of a vast snowy peak – so they decided to give themselves a half an hour or so to stroll around, stretch their legs, and eat breakfast.  Marcus leaned against the side of the Rover, watching with a smile on his face as Abby – who refused to permit her daughter to enter the presence of royalty looking unkempt – finished neatly braiding Clarke’s hair, and then submitted with a laugh as Clarke insisted on braiding hers.  She did not have quite the skill of Lexa’s palace servants, dressing Abby for the formal banquet and braiding the shape of Alpha Station into her hair – a memory that made Marcus swallow hard, thinking about that whisper of diaphanous tangerine silk and Abby’s luminous skin – but she did a perfectly credible job plaiting Abby’s hair into a very Grounder-like style. 

She protested slightly when Clarke insisted on trading coats with her – Clarke was wearing a long, rather tattered leather duster which she had swiped from the tower in Polis when she and Lexa were making their escape and she’d needed Grounder camouflage to get out of the city.  “I don’t have to look like a Grounder anymore,” Abby pointed out sensibly, “I’m not the Chancellor.  Worry about Kane.”

“Kane will be fine,” said Clarke.  “He has the brand on his arm.  Beard’s coming along nicely too,” she added, grinning at him, and he gave a teasing little bow of acknowledgment.  “Besides,” she told her mother, “my coat’s warmer, and you look cold.”

“Fine,” Abby grumbled, but from the way she ceased to shiver and rub her arms from the moment she slipped it on, Clarke knew she’d won.  Which was fine with Kane.  The tough leather coat and the loose, heavy braids were a far cry from her silken Haiplana finery, but in its own way it was even more sexy.  She looked like a warrior.

“You should keep that coat,” he tossed over his shoulder as Clarke disappeared to go relieve her full bladder and Abby walked back down the road a few dozen feet to get a better look at the view. 

Then he got back in the Rover, with no idea he was making a terrible mistake.

The broad, flat, paved road with its broken yellow line down the center ended around the next curve, and they would make their way up to the peak of the mountain along the rough tangle of roads Azgeda used for horses and carts.  It was slow going, and difficult to navigate, so Marcus had pulled out the map to go over it one last time.  So he didn’t hear the Azgeda scouts as they moved noiselessly out of the trees, and he didn’t hear Abby struggle, drawing breath to scream but then falling quickly silent as a rough hunter’s knife moved casually to her throat.  And he didn’t even notice she’d been gone a long time until Clarke, mouth full of the protein bar she’d scavenged from Octavia’s supply pack for breakfast, leaned her head over Marcus’ shoulder and said, “Where’d Mom go?”

It was chaos after that.

Clarke took one side of the road, Marcus the other, frantically chasing every shadow through the forest, calling out Abby’s name, but it was no use.  She was gone. 

Only then did Clarke admit the one flaw in her plan, which she’d kept back for fear of frightening her mother, which was that King Roan didn’t know she was coming.

Kane stared at her.

“He doesn’t know we’re coming,” he repeated numbly.

“No.”

“So we have no formal protection from the King.  There was nothing to stop any Azgeda scout – or, hell, even any average citizen – from just killing us all in our sleep.  They could ride up any moment and slit both our throats and Roan would never even know.”

“There wasn’t time to get him a message,” said Clarke.  “I gambled that taking the Rover and trading off sleep shifts would be enough.”

“Clarke –“

“And one gun.”

_“You brought a gun?”_

“Only in case of emergencies.”

“If anyone sees that – “

“It’s hidden under the floorboards, Kane, and that’s not our biggest problem right now.”

“All right,” said Kane.  “You tell me.  You know more about these people than me.  What do we do?”

“They didn’t kill her,” said Clarke firmly, with perhaps a bit more confidence than she felt, trying to swallow down the quaver in her voice, trying not to think about her mother in the hands of Ice Nation.  “If they wanted to frighten us by killing her, they’d have made noise, or they’d have left the –“ She broke off suddenly, feeling a little nauseous and unable to finish the sentence.  She’d seen what Ice Nation did to captives before.  She closed her eyes and clenched her fists and tried not to think about blood in the snow.  Kane placed a hand on her shoulder, and it steadied her.  She took a deep breath and pressed on.  “If they wanted to frighten us, we would know,” she said.  “And if it was simply punishment for crossing the border into Sector 8, we would all be dead.”

“So they wanted a live hostage,” he said.  “Why?”

“Because of the bounty,” said Clarke, a look of horror dawning on her face. 

Kane’s eyes were puzzled.  “Why would they think there’s a bounty on Abby?”

“Because they think she’s someone else,” Clarke told him, the pieces clicking together in her mind as she spoke. 

“I don’t understand.”

“They saw me,” said Clarke.  “They must have.  They saw me, they know who I am.”

“Clarke – “

“They saw Wanheda on one side of the road and they saw a woman in a Grounder coat with dark braids on the other and _they didn’t see you,”_ she told him urgently, and he stared in astonishment as she jumped into the passenger seat of the car and closed the door, waving him in behind her.

“Where are we going?” he said, turning the key in the ignition and feeling the engine leap to life beneath his hand.

“To the Ice Keep,” she said.  “To Roan.  As fast as you can.  They’ll need his royal insignia to collect the reward from Polis.”

“Clarke – “

“Kane, they think she’s _Lexa,”_ she said desperately, and he felt the words like a fist to the stomach. 

Because Clarke had told him this part of the story.

On the first leg of the trip, Clarke had told Kane everything about her escape from Lexa’s tower and the chaos that followed in Polis.  He knew about Heda Ontari and the conclave, and he knew about the Commander chip Clarke had seen removed from the base of Lexa’s skull, and he knew that Lexa was in hiding because she was now the only other living Nightblood, the only threat to Ontari’s throne.  And he knew about the massive, staggering reward Ontari had offered to anyone from any clan who found and captured the escaped former Commander and returned her to Polis.

Dead.


	4. Ice Keep

Their first impression of Azcapa was its silence.

Rough horse trails that led up the mountain wove their way through deserted forests, where nothing and no one seemed to live.  It was nothing like Polis, where a vibrant city had sprung up around the tower and the open warm spaces teemed with life.  There was no marketplace here, no humming crowds of people.  Where the people of Ice Nation lived, they didn't know, but it certainly wasn't here.  Here it was dark forest and forbidding rock as far as they could see, until the Rover rounded a corner and the woods disappeared and they were at the top of the great white-capped peak, where a crumbling stone estate sat in the middle of a clearing.

In Polis, the Commander lived in the very center of her people.  In Azgeda, the king lived alone.

A century ago, before the world ended, Azcapa must have been a beautiful place - white snow, green trees, blue sky, and a fanciful confection of a chateau crowned by towers and turrets - but now it gave them both the shivers.  Glassless windows grinned darkly at them like empty eye sockets, and the sound of the Rover’s engine startled a flock of crows off the remains of what had once been a castle-like parapet. On a broken wooden sign, they could make out a fragment of the word "HÔTEL," but the building was such a foreboding ruin it seemed impossible to Marcus to imagine it that way, full of life, full of people.

Yet there must be people somewhere nearby, because the thick hum of far-off voices floated out of the stones and over the snow towards them.  But even though the roar of the Rover's engine must have signaled their coming from miles away, they both found themselves uneasy that no Ice Nation guards came out to either greet or threaten them.  What could the people of Azcapa be doing, that the approach of an unannounced vehicle from enemy territory could not tear them away from?

 _Witnessing the death of Commander Lexa,_ the thought came horribly to his mind.  _Gathered to watch one of their own run a knife through the heart of a slender woman with long dark braids who matched the description they'd been given of a Heda most of them had never personally seen._

But _Roan_ had.  That was the only hope he had to hold onto.  _Please, please,_ he begged in his mind as he got out of the Rover and came around the back to open the door for Clarke, _let them have taken her straight to the King._ In Polis, when Marcus Kane took the brand, when they had learned about the bomb at Mount Weather, Roan had been there.  Roan had met Lexa, but more importantly, he had met Abby.  He would know who she was.  And if he were really as trustworthy as Clarke believed him to be - and Clarke's instincts, he felt, were to be trusted - surely he would let Abby go.

He held out a hand to help Clarke out of the back of the Rover, then stopped short as the hem of her shirt rode up just slightly and he saw the outline of a gun tucked into her belt.

"Absolutely not," he insisted, a note of horror in his voice.  "Put that back."

"We could need it, Kane.  I'll keep it out of sight."

"You know the laws of the Grounders better than anyone, Clarke," he said.  "If this place is anything like Tondc, it could be perceived as an act of aggression to enter Azcapa with Skaikru weapons.”

"We can't go in there unarmed."

"We can and we will."

"Kane, what if she's - "

"No," he cut her off abruptly.  "We'll go to Roan, we'll explain everything, Roan will fix this.  You trust him?"  Grudgingly, she nodded.  "Then trust him.  You're an _ambassador,_ Clarke,” he added firmly.  “Act like it."

“She’s my _mother,_ Kane," said Clarke, with a steely edge to her voice that was the first indicator he'd had (besides the gun) of how frightened she was that they might have arrived too late.

“Yes, and she’s my – “ He cut off the retort as quickly as he’d began it, leaving Clarke to regard him curiously.

What was the word for it?  What were they to each other?  "Haiplana" was what he had begun to say, but that was too intimate a word between them to be spoken in the presence of anyone else.  “Girlfriend” was so wrong it set his teeth on edge, and the thought of saying the word “lover” to Abby’s daughter made him cringe. There was no right name for it.

Except, that wasn't quite true.  He knew exactly the word he wanted.  He wanted to turn it over and over in the palm of his hand, this small word with only four letters, a humble unassuming thing that carried something vast inside it because what it meant was forever.  He knew the word he wanted, the word he hoped someday might belong to him, but it didn’t belong to him yet, and he had no right to ask for it.  Because the humble unassuming symbol of that humble unassuming word that contained infinity inside it had been given to Abby once before, and she still wore around her neck the reminder of the twenty years that word had belonged to someone else.  He did not yet know whether there was a second infinity inside her that could allow that word, perhaps, to belong also to him.  And since he was the reason that ring hung around her neck instead of on Jake Griffin's hand, he could not possibly ask.  Not yet. 

Clarke was still watching him as though she knew more than she let on, but the look in her eyes was impossible to read.  He wondered what she knew, and what she felt about it.  He wondered what Abby said to her daughter during those twenty-five long cold nights of separation that she would never say to him.

“She’s important to me too,” he finished haltingly, know how inadequate it was, knowing it was a pale shadow of the truth, but not trusting himself to say anything more than that out loud.  Clarke gave him a long look, but finally nodded and replaced the gun in the floorboard compartment of the back of the Rover, then let Kane help her back down and led the way to the main entrance.

Kane followed, the words he hadn’t said out loud echoing over and over in his head as his boots crunched through the unbroken crust of glittering snow.

_“Ai hod em in.  Ai sonraun laik em sonraun.”_

_I love her.  My life is her life._

* * * * *

The door pushed open with no resistance, leaving them in a cavernous open hall stretching out in two directions, a crumbling stone staircase before them.  Birds flapped in and out overhead through the open windows, whose stone ledges were heaped with snow.  It was bitter cold and entirely deserted, but the hum of voices still surrounded them as though it were contained in the very air.  Marcus felt the eerie sense that he had stepped into some dark fairy tale - the king and the princess come to the enemy's tower to ransom back the lost queen.  

Octavia's map, of course, had not planned for the necessity that they would need to find their way to wherever King Roan of Azgeda held his prisoners.  It had been carefully drawn by Indra and Lexa to lead them right to the king's front door, on roads wide enough for the Rover, and it had done its job to perfection.  It was not their fault that Kane and Clarke needed more. 

They had no plan, and no weapons, and the same mounting sense of time passing, of _Hurry, hurry, before its too late,_ echoed in both their minds. 

Clarke pulled a pair of short-range walkie-talkies from the bag of supplies Octavia had smuggled out of Arkadia and handed one to Kane.  “Split up,” she said, “and go fast."  Then she turned left, leaving him to go right, and they began to make their way through the castle.

The buzz of voices never ceased - it surrounded him everywhere - yet each door he pushed frantically open led to yet another deserted room.  It was otherworldly, as though the voices belonged to ghosts inside the walls, and he briefly wondered if perhaps he was dead, throat slit by an Ice Nation scout, bleeding a river of crimson onto the snow-covered road as Grounders on horseback rode through the woods with Abby. 

He shook the thought away.  _Focus,_ he snapped at himself.  _Abby needs you._

He made short work of the main floor with no luck, and the silence on his walkie-talkie suggested that Clarke fared no better.  But as he rounded a corner and saw the sweep of a curved iron staircase descending to a lower floor, he thought he imagined the echo of human voices growing louder.  Steeling himself, he took a breath and made his way as swiftly and silently as he could down the steps – and immediately found the source of the voices.

He was in a vast, cathedral-like space with lofty high ceilings and peeling sky-blue paint on the walls.  Its windows, like those of every other room, were wide open to the elements – just diamond-shaped holes in the stone –so even though he found himself at the back of a vast crowd of Grounders, filling the cavernous room, even the press of all those fur-clad bodies did nothing to take the edge off the cold.  

The crowd was facing away from him, their attention captured by someone who was shouting in Trigedasleng about something he couldn't see, and yet he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had found her.  Some irresistible magnetic impulse pulled him forward, shoving his way through the crowd to startled exclamations, but he didn't care.  He brushed them all off, elbowing his way through, the pulse of Abby's heartbeat pounding in sync with his from somewhere in this crumbling blue chamber and guiding him towards her. 

He had pushed his way through the entire crowd, stepping out into open space, before he was seized by two pairs of huge, strong hands, holding him in place and preventing him from coming any further.  As he looked up at the sight before him, he realized why.

He was in King Roan's throne room.

Before him was a vast white stone dais bearing a strange, rather sinister empty throne.  Where Lexa’s throne was built from twisting, tangled branches of wood, honoring her Trikru heritage, the Ice Nation had built their rulers a throne of glass.  The flat seat and back of the chair looked comfortable enough, but the square base and high, glittering, jagged back were studded all over with knife-sharp fragments of glass and crystal, smashed pieces of chandelier, broad flat panes of what might once have been the room’s windows, and scatterings of tiny shards that sparkled in the wintry light like a flung handful of diamonds.  

At the foot of the dais stood a crowd of Grounders surrounding a small, kneeling figure, head bowed beneath a mask of rough canvas sacking that masked her face from view.  But it didn't matter.  Marcus would have known her anywhere.  “Abby!” he cried out, unable to stop himself, and the figure turned towards him in startled relief before hands shoved her roughly back down again and Marcus realized exactly what it was that he was looking at.

She was not kneeling in penance, or supplication.

She was kneeling before a massive, fur-clad Grounder in white Ice Nation war paint, holding a wicked-looking blade at the back of her neck, while a cluster of other Grounders stood nearby as though waiting for a signal.  Marcus tried to pull away from the hands holding him captive, and got the telltale cold sharpness of a knife blade to the back for his troubles.

"Spek yo daun gon oson Haihefa," growled the voice in his ear.  _Bow down before our King._

“Markus kom Skaikru,” said a low, surprised voice, as a tall figure disentangled himself from the cluster of Grounders surrounding the kneeling woman and came towards him, waving his hand for the guards to stand down.

"King Roan," said Marcus, with a respectful bow, and the crowd began to murmur in puzzlement that this stranger seemed to know their king.

“You are a long way from home, Skaihefa,” Roan observed.  “Why have you come to me?”

“Skaihefa no more,” said Marcus.  “There is civil war in Arkadia, as there is in Polis.  There is much to discuss with you, but first I must ask you to let her go.  She belongs to us.”

The massive, broad-shouldered Grounder with a face full of wicked scars and matted gray hair whose blade was drawn to behead the captive figure turned to Marcus then and advanced toward him, sword angled straight at his heart.  “The bounty is ours!” he bellowed.  "Skaikru shall not take it from us.  My men and I have brought her here to Azhefa to collect the bounty from Heda Ontari for her capture, and all of Azcapa has gathered here before the King to stand witness as I cut off her head.  Heda has promised lands and fortune to any man who returns Lexa kom Trikru to Polis.”

"And do you know," said Marcus evenly, fighting to maintain a cool demeanor in the presence of the king, "what Lexa kom Trikru looks like?"

“Do not insult our intelligence, Sky Man who is no longer king,” growled the Grounder.  “She had been described to us.  A small thin woman with dark braids who travels with the one they call Wanheda.”

This got Roan’s attention, and his eyes snapped up to meet Marcus' gaze with an expression of surprise.  “Wanheda?” he repeated, astonished, and Marcus nodded.

“Yes,” he said.  “She is here with me.  She brought us from Arkadia to seek sanctuary and aid from a king she promised we could trust."

Roan looked from the kneeling figure to Marcus and then back again for a long moment.  Then the corners of his mouth twitched into what Kane could have sworn was almost a smile.

“Breik em au, branwoda,” he ordered the armed men firmly.  "Dison nou laik Leksa kom Trikru."  _Let her go, you idiots.  This is not Lexa of the Tree People.  
_

The man with the sword looked up at his king uncertainly. “Haihefa,” he grumbled, “ain honon . . .” 

“Em _nou_ laik honon,” said Roan, a cold sharp edge to his voice.  "Em laik lukot."  _She is_ not _a prisoner.  She is a friend.  
_

"Haihefa?"

"Breik em au," ordered Roan again.  The cluster of Grounders around the kneeling figure dispersed, all except the man with the sword, who was unwilling to give up so easily, and moved back protectively towards his quarry.  The king pushed him aside and knelt down in front of the crouched, trembling figure.  “Em nou laik honon,” he said again, more gently this time, untying the rope around her wrists himself before reaching up to undo the knots that held the rough sacking over her head, pulling it free.  “I cannot apologize enough for the treatment you have received at the hands of my people,” he said to a dazed Abby, lifting her gently to her feet.  "You are all my honored guests."  He pressed his lips gallantly to the back of her hand, causing the entire crowd to erupt into a volcanic roar of murmurs and whispers.  “Dison nou laik Heda Leksa,” he announced to the assembled room, glaring pointedly at the defiant man still holding his sword.  “Dison laik Abi kom Skaikru, nomon gon Wanheda.” _This is not Commander Lexa._   _This is Abby of the Sky People, mother of Wanheda._

The words “nomon gon Wanheda” murmured through the room in waves, and the man with the sword began to look ever so slightly as though he realized he’d made a terrible mistake.  The panic in his eyes increased as a commotion erupted in the crowd behind them, and Marcus turned to see Clarke – who had heard him on the walkie-talkie and come running from the opposite side of the keep – fight her way through the crowd to her mother.

“Ai laik Wanheda!” she said to the crowd, who began to shift and murmur uncomfortably.  Even among the Ice Nation, her legend had spread, and while there were more than a few faces in the crowd who looked ready to slit her throat, many more looked genuinely afraid.  “Osir laik lukot,” she explained.  “Ai don lid Marcus, heda kom Skaikru, in gon Azhefa.”  _We are allies._   _I bring Marcus, leader of Skaikru, to the Ice King._

“Well met once more, Clarke of the Sky People,” said Roan, shaking her hand.  “You have come a long way to my doorstep, so your need must be urgent.”

“It is,” she said.  “We have much to discuss.  War has already begun, and I need your help.”

“An alliance between Azgeda and Skaikru?” Roan asked, raising an eyebrow.  “When the rightful Skaihefa has been dethroned by a man who slaughtered hundreds of my men?”  Kane and Abby stared.  “Yes,” he said, “I know all about the uprisings within your camp.  I know this man you call Pike.  Azgeda does not recognize the Sky People as allies with such a leader as this.”

“Then help me,” said Clarke.  “Pike will never be your ally, but Kane will.  He bears the brand.  He is the true leader of the thirteenth clan.”

Roan looked from Clarke to Abby to Kane and then back again.  “You surprise me, Wanheda," he said.  "Have you come all this way through the mountains to Azcapa to ask my help simply for this, to offer my aid so your mother's lover may take back his rightful throne?  A long journey for a small favor."

All three of them winced a bit at the matter-of-fact way he said the word “lover.”  Abby blushed and busied herself with straightening out her tangled hair and Kane suddenly found himself very interested in the tile pattern on the floor. 

Clarke recovered first, meeting Roan’s eyes squarely and gambling on the direct approach.  “I think,” she said, “that you know exactly why I’m here.”

“So do I,” said Roan.  “Come with me, Sky People.  You must be hungry, and I believe we have many things to say.”  He led the way through the crowd, Clarke at his side.  Marcus took Abby by the hand and followed in their trail as the whole capital city of Ice Nation stepped aside to let them pass.

Once out of the crowded ballroom and up the stairs, Roan led Clarke into one of the large deserted rooms Kane had searched upon first entering, followed by a phalanx of his personal guard.  Kane pulled Abby into a shadowy nook near the doorway, restraining her for a moment from entering behind her daughter, needing to make sure she was all right.

“Hey,” he said gently, cupping her jaw in his hand.  “Look at me, Abby.  It's over.” 

She did look at him then, for the first time since Roan had pulled the sack off her head, and he could see that her eyes were red and wet with tears.  She had been crying for a long time.  He didn’t know how long she had knelt on that icy stone floor, feeling the chill of a steel blade against the back of her bowed neck and believing that no one was coming for her, but even one moment was too long. 

“Marcus,” she whispered brokenly, “I thought – “

"Never," he said firmly.  "I would never have let that happen."

"I thought you'd never find me."

“I will _always_ find you,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close against his chest.  “Wherever we go, Abby.  Whatever happens.  Whatever separates us.  I will always find you.”  And he felt her collapse against his strong, solid chest, her narrow shoulders trembling with cold and tears.  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his voice raw with emotion as he pressed kiss after kiss against her silky hair.  “I’m so sorry I didn’t keep you safe.  I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Marcus,” she said, pulling away and staring up at him, “you saved my life.”

“I could save your life a thousand times,” he said, “and still never repay you for all the ways you’ve saved mine.”  And as he bent his head to kiss her, he felt her arms wrap tightly around his back and he heard the thunderous drumbeat of her panicked, frenzied heartbeat begin to slow and soften and ease back down to a calmer rhythm, and he thought to himself how extraordinary it was that he should be given this gift, that he could kiss her fear away, could feel it physically leaving her body, could feel the strength and certainty that made her who she was flow back into her blood and bones.  Recompense, in some small way, for the salvation she brought to him every day.

Over and over, she had healed him, rescued him, saved him, transformed him.  His heart had been cold and hollow and full of dead things, like a howling wind rushing through a cave and stirring up nothing but scatterings of musty dried leaves.  It was a place no one had ever set foot in longer than he could remember.  And yet Abby had made herself at home there so gradually, her presence so natural and comforting, that green things had begun to take root again, and by the time he realized he was in love with her the empty cave had blossomed into a garden and his heart was so full he didn’t know what to do with it.  It wasn’t merely that she’d opened up a place inside the deepest part of Marcus Kane to make a home for herself; it was all the people she’d brought in there with her.  She had given him a family.

“Ai hod yu in,” he whispered against her mouth, feeling her lips open beneath his to murmur the words back to him, and as they dissolved into each other, Marcus could think of nothing else except a promise to them both that he would never let her out of his arms again.


	5. Roan

“Are you certain you’re all right?” Roan asked Abby for the hundredth time, regarding her with worry in his serious dark eyes, and for the hundredth time, she smiled wearily and patted his hand and told him she was fine.  Clarke and Marcus didn’t believe her any more than Roan did, but he was the one whose concern was also tinged with embarrassment and anger; the thought of what might have happened to her if his men had decided it was simpler to simply bring in a dead body for the king’s identification made everyone feel sick, and Roan didn’t like it any more than the others had. 

Ontari and Roan’s relationship was now decidedly complicated; he was her king, but – although it remained an open question whether Azgeda would join the alliance – technically she was his Commander.  He had no wish to make an open enemy of her until he absolutely had to, and until all the pieces were moved into place to ensure such a move would be in his favor.  This made the Sky People’s open presence inside Azcapa a bit thornier than Clarke’s original plan of making their way to him quietly.  Now everyone knew Wanheda had crossed the border with her mother and the deposed King of the Sky People who were staying inside the keep under King Roan’s protection . . . which meant it was only a matter of time before some Ice Nation rider loyal to Ontari made their way to Polis and relayed the news to the Commander, or simply decided to take matters into their own hands and deliver the captives themselves.  They no longer had the head start they thought they had. 

“Once Ontari knows you’re here, my ability to protect you is compromised considerably,” Roan explained, rising from the table despite Abby’s protestations to fetch the water pitcher from the sideboard to refill her glass.  "Even within these walls, there could be danger." 

He’d left them in his private quarters, surrounded by his personal guard, while he returned to the throne room with a grim face to do something about which he grimly assured them they wanted no details to the men who had attacked Abby.  When he returned, it was late afternoon.  Marcus sat in the fading afternoon light on a decaying sofa draped in furs, Abby curled up against his side, her drowsy head resting on his shoulder, stroking the hair of the sleeping Clarke whose head rested in her lap, but they woke when Roan came back with a cluster of servants bearing fragrant, steaming platters, which they set on a low wooden table in front of the hearth, surrounded by heaps of cushions and furs.  Roan dismissed the servants, for privacy’s sake, and waved them over to join him.

Kane had not eaten real food in nearly a month – only the protein bars Octavia had packed, and prison rations before that – and hadn’t realized he was starving until the aromas of hot, savory food swept over him, and he could see that the Griffins felt the same.  There was a heavily-spiced meat stew, rich and filling and highly flavored, which warmed their whole bodies with every bite, and an herb-flecked kind of flatbread to go with it, along with a bowl of roasted root vegetables glazed in a sweet, pungent sauce.  The three famished Sky People descended upon their plates and bowls with little restraint; then, bellies warm and full, sipping the sweet, fresh cold water Roan had served them (which Kane suspected to have once been snow) and the heady, potent, highly-spiced mulled wine the Ice Nation called _fayawoda_ (“firewater”), they had finally set down to business.

“Do you really think she has enough support among your people to move against you in your own capitol?” Clarke raised an eyebrow.  “You’re hardly some interloper, you’re Queen Nia’s son and the rightful heir to the throne.  She can’t possibly contest it.”

“She won’t,” he said matter-of-factly.  “She won’t take any kind of formal action.  She’ll do the same thing my mother did when your mountain was destroyed.  She’ll send one person – someone highly skilled, untraceable – and they’ll slip in and out without ever being detected.  You’d wake up strapped to the back of a horse bound for Polis before you knew what had happened.”

“Then we need to give everyone in Azcapa who might secretly be loyal to Ontari a compelling reason to leave us alone,” Kane said, and Roan looked thoughtful.

“A treaty,” Clarke suggested.  “A formal diplomatic alliance between Skaikru and Azgeda.”

“My people tend not to care much for diplomatic alliances,” Roan said wryly, with magnificent understatement.

“They will if you tell them it was _your_ idea,” she countered.  “Tell the Ice Nation that Wanheda came to warn you of an oncoming attack.  They know about the explosion at Mount Weather, and about the massacre of the Grounder army Lexa sent.  They remember the Mountain Men.  They know what our weapons can do.”

“And you can embellish at will,” added Abby dryly, “to drive the point home.”

“Yes,” agreed Clarke.  “Tell them Pike has a massive stockpile of weapons and is preparing to use it against Azgeda.”

“Which is hardly even that far from the truth,” Kane pointed out, and Clarke nodded. 

“Say that Pike has an arsenal the likes of which they cannot imagine and he wants to move against Azgeda, but you’ve struck an alliance with Skaikru’s rightful leader, who promises that if you help him depose Pike, Skaikru will stand as ally to Azgeda.  Along with all their weapons.  Fighting on _your_ side in battle, instead of against you.  Remind them," she added darkly, "that ten men from Arkadia slaughtered three hundred Grounder warriors in a matter of minutes.”

Kane blanched a little at this pointed reminder of the massacre he hadn’t been able to stop, the dark scars on Bellamy’s soul he couldn't protect him from.  Abby said nothing, but took his hand under the table in silence and pressed it firmly in her own, and she didn’t have to say _“it wasn’t your fault”_ out loud for him to hear her speak those words with her entire body.

“Say Wanheda brought you this warning,” Clarke went on.  “Don’t mention Ontari, not just yet.  Don’t let it slip out that we’re mustering an army to march against her.  Make it about Pike.  Wanheda comes bringing the last hope for Azgeda to avoid slaughter, because she and the Ice King trust each other.”

Roan was silent for a long moment.  They watched him tear off small pieces of flatbread to sop up the last of his stew, his movements deliberate, unhurried, and they could tell he was thinking hard.

When he finally spoke, his words startled them all.

“What about Abby?” he said unexpectedly, and all three of them stared.

“What about me?” Abby asked, curious and apprehensive at once.  Roan took a long sip of his hot wine and regarded them all intently.

“I see all the merits in this plan,” he said calmly, “and I find myself inclined to support it.  Clarke knows I have no great love for Lexa kom Trikru, but Ontari will be a disaster as Commander.  With Azgeda’s army and Skaikru’s weapons, and with a promise of alliance on better terms than she was willing to give my mother – yes, I will help you put Lexa back on the throne.  And I see all the necessity in beginning, first, with removing your Chancellor Pike from power and establishing a treaty with the Sky People.  And yes, until such time as my people can learn to see yours as genuine allies, we shall have to motivate them through fear, with the threat of Skaikru weapons.  I see all this.  But you’re missing one very crucial detail, about which I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you.”

“Which is what?”

“That two of you have established diplomatic credentials,” he pointed out, “and one of you doesn’t.”

Kane and Clarke looked at each other, hearts sinking.  This was a factor they hadn't considered.

“Let us say, for the sake of argument," said Roan, pouring more wine into each of their cups and then taking a long drink himself, "that I do all these things exactly as you've asked me.  I tell my people that Wanheda has come to deliver us from slaughter and offers Azgedakru her aid to destroy the man who killed so many of them.  I say Wanheda’s power over life and death is allied to us, but will be turned against us and lead to our destruction if any harm should come to her.  The people inside the capitol are politicians, and the people in the villages outside it are superstitious.  Either way, the myth of Wanheda will protect you," he said to Clarke.  "Yes.  This plan will keep you safe from harm at the hands of my people.  And the same goes for you, he added, turning to Kane.  "Once we have established a formal treaty, and declared our intent to replace you as the leader of Skaikru, you would take on the status of a king.  A far better king, in Azgedakru's mind, than the Grounder slayer your people currently have.  Once the treaty is signed, not one person in Azgeda benefits from your death.  Fear, politics, practicality . . . all these things will keep both of you safe, once an alliance has been established with Marcus as Heda kom Skaikru and Wanheda, Mountain-Slayer, allied with him.  But none of this protects _Abby_.”

"You think she's still in danger?" Clarke asked him, a low pulsing hum of worry rising up in her voice, and he nodded.  "Not mistaken for Lexa, I mean, but as herself.  To take her to Ontari.  You think . . . you think someone might try to abduct her again?"

Roan’s eyes on hers were difficult to read.  “No,” he answered her finally.  “I’m not saying someone _might._   I'm saying someone _definitely will_.”

Kane said nothing, his heart hammering in his chest, gripping Abby’s hand in his ever tighter, heartbreakingly aware of how futile it was but unwilling to let go anyway.

“I don’t understand,” Clarke said sharply, her own fear masking itself as annoyance.  “If you’re so convinced that your people will respect an alliance with me and with Kane, why not with my mom?”

“Because our ruling system is not like yours,” said Roan.  “Azgedakru does not trust elections, diplomacy, the empty words of politicians.   They trust _power._   The mythical power of Wanheda who commands death – the military might of Heda Markus kom Skaikru and all the guns and bombs at his fingertips – these are forces they respect.  But your mother is no longer a member of your ruling council, she possesses no magic, she offers no strategic alliances or skills, and she will be worth more to them dead than alive."

Kane bristled at this calm pronouncement of a death sentence and opened his mouth to fire back a defensive retort, but Abby’s hand on his arm stilled him.  “Marcus, he’s right,” she said gently.  “They have their own healers and they’re not likely to trust Skaikru medical treatment, so that’s not a compelling reason to keep me alive.  And I’m not on the Council anymore.  To them, I’m just a Sky Person who crossed the border without permission.”

Roan nodded. 

“Bodyguards, then,” insisted Kane, his voice heated.  “A military detail.  24-hour watch.  _Anything._   I don’t know.”

“Marcus,” Abby murmured gently, but he ignored her and pressed on, eyes locked on Roan’s.

“There must be _something_ you can do,” he urged desperately.  “All of this is meaningless if we can’t keep Abby safe.”

Roan opened his palms in a gesture of resignation.  “I will do what I can,” he said.  “I can keep you all safe here, as my personal guests. But Marcus, once you step outside these walls again to travel back through Azgeda to your own people, the danger will be great.  It’s a journey of more than eight hundred miles, and a great many things can happen.  I will send loyal guards, I will ride at her side myself, I will do whatever I can.  But attacking the King of the Sky People would be a crime punishable by death, while attacking a Skaikru civilian who violated the existing treaty by crossing the border uninvited would be seen as justice.  It would be different if Abby held a formal position of state, but – “

“All right, then,” said Clarke, “what if she did?”

“What do you mean?”

“Put her back on the Council,” she suggested.  “Or make her the Vice-Chancellor.  Create a position for her.  Anything.”

“I’m not sure our people will take kindly to nepotism,” said Abby mildly, but Clarke waved it off.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said.  “The question is, will it _work_.”

“No,” said Roan, "it won't," and Clarke’s face fell.  “Azgeda is a monarchy,” he explained.  “Monarchy is the only form of government these people understand.  Your councils, your elections, they mean nothing.  They know that the Commander is chosen in the holy ritual of the conclave and they know that our kings and queens are chosen by marriage and bloodlines.  Assigning Abby a title that is meaningless to them solves nothing.”

“What if it was a title that _did_ mean something to them?” said Kane, very quietly, with some emotion in his voice that Clarke and Abby couldn’t read.

“What are you talking about?” Clarke asked him, puzzled, but he barely seemed to hear her.  He was looking only at Roan.  He could not look at Abby at all.

“I would never ask that of you,” Roan began, a note of hesitation in his voice, but Kane shook his head.

“Just tell me if it would work.”

“Marcus, it would be permanent,” said Roan, brow furrowed.  “You understand that?  It would be entirely real.  It would need to be a Grounder ceremony, performed here, by me, with my people as witnesses.”

“But it would _work_ ,” Marcus pressed him, demanding.  “Wouldn’t it?  It would keep anyone from harming her.  That’s all I care about.  Will it keep Abby safe?”

"Yes," said Roan, slowly and reluctantly.  "It would work."

“Marcus, I don’t understand,” said Abby, turning to him in confusion.  “What ceremony?  What title?”

“Queen of the Sky People, Mom,” said Clarke, the truth flashing over her suddenly.  “He’s asking you to marry him.”


	6. Misunderstandings

Roan had placed his guests in the East and West turrets, explaining that they were the easiest sectors of the building to defend.  They faced out over a jagged, vertiginous cliff, with retaining walls too smooth for anyone to climb up from the outside.  The windows were too small for a human body, too narrow for a grappling hook, and too high for an archer – though guards were stationed on the tower wall above and at the windows below to keep watch through the night, just in case.  Inside, they were just as secure; the stairwells were narrow and windowless, the halls wide and open with nowhere to hide.  Roan had placed them in largely-deserted areas of the castle, where it was simpler to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity, since no one was meant to pass through those halls but the king, his guests and his personal guard. 

He explained all this to them as they climbed the narrow stone staircase that spiraled up into the East turret, where Clarke would be quartered.  His tone was easy and natural, calculated both to put them at ease about their safety that night – and to fill the heavy, tense silence that had crashed down over them after Kane’s unconventional marriage proposal.

They followed Roan down the hall and up the stairs, so close behind him that, when they entered the narrow stairwell that forced them to walk single file, he found himself separated from her, Clarke between them.  He trudged heavily up the stairs, guards at his back following them up, and listened distantly to Roan’s descriptions of guard rotations and wall fortifications, which seemed only of interest to Clarke.  Abby was not listening either.

As they stepped out of the stairwell and into the wide, drafty hall which led to Clarke’s bedroom, he let himself move in closer to Abby, and without missing a beat, she moved smoothly away.  It was done so subtly that you would not have known it if you weren’t looking for it; but of course, all three of them were.  Roan gave a credible performance of pretending not to notice and ushered Clarke down the hallway to her bedroom, pulling her away as she looked back with a furrowed brow at Kane and her mother staring silently in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by the king’s guard and an oppressively heavy silence.

Abby had not said yes yet.

Abby, in fact, had not said anything at all.

Roan returned to guide Kane and Abby down the long, wide gallery to the turret at the other end, where they would be sleeping, and as he opened the heavy wooden door and waved them inside, Kane found himself marveling anew at the natural tact and delicacy he would never have expected to find in the King of the Ice Nation.

Clarke’s turret consisted of one large bedchamber.  This one had two.  

Perhaps out of general good manners, perhaps out of sensitivity to the fog of silence that had descended upon Abby after the marriage conversation, Roan had clearly opted not to make any assumptions about whether they would be sharing a bed.  But to spare Clarke the awkwardness of having to stand in the hallway and watch as that decision was made right in front of her, he had delivered her to her own room first.  Now he simply left Marcus and Abby in the small foyer in front of both doors, instructed them that they would find clothing, nightwear and the means for bathing and washing in both bedrooms, then closed the door leading back to the hallway, leaving them alone.

After a long moment of silence, where Abby neither looked at him nor spoke, Marcus finally decided to simply pick a room and then see whether she would follow him or choose the other door.  He chose the one on the left, at random, and opened the door to step inside. 

Given that it was essentially a prison at the very top of the world, it was really rather a pretty room, with high ceilings and a nearly-intact chandelier hanging over greying walls that had once been something like violet.  Near the door sat a low table, its surface studded all over with a mosaic of colorful broken glass. Servants had clearly already been here, preparing the rooms for their soon-to-be-royal guests; a steaming brass carafe holding more of that mulled wine sat on the table’s glittering surface beside two ivory cups , and a fire crackled merrily in the massive fireplace on the farthest end of the room.

The bed was a massive carved wooden monstrosity, so huge it gave him the feeling of a ship docked indoors; but it was located directly beneath the room’s three high windows, right in the path of the swirling, frosty wind.  Smart if you were dodging arrows (they’d sail right over your head and into the far wall) but no use to a Skaikru man without the Ice Nation’s hardy winter-proof blood.  The fireplace seemed to Marcus a far more sensible bet; so he busied himself with collecting the furs and pillows from the bed and piling them on the floor beneath the broad white mantel, while he waited to see what Abby would do. 

He was ashamed to admit to himself how relieved he was when he heard her, after several silent minutes, enter his room and close the door behind him.  But she didn’t approach him, and she didn’t sit.  Instead, she stood near the doorway, arms wrapped around herself, as though braced to flee at any moment.  He gave her a moment and finished up his makeshift bed before turning back her direction.

“You’ve been very quiet,” he began, in a mild voice, sitting down on the side of the bed to unlace and pull off his boots.  She didn’t move.  “I understand why you’re upset,” he went on gently.  “You and Jake – “

“Don’t you  _ dare _ talk to me about Jake,” Abby spat at him coldly, and his head snapped up to stare at her, realizing for the first time what the heavy dark cloud hovering around her really was.

Abby was  _ furious. _

Her fists were clenched tight at her sides and her entire body was coiled taut with tension, and she glowered at him with flashing dark eyes burning with anger.  She hadn’t looked at him that way in a long time – they’d been through so much together since those days – and this was so far from the reaction he was expecting that he found himself entirely baffled.

“Abby,” he began again, “all I meant was – “

“I’m not a  _ chess piece _ , Marcus,” she snapped, “I’m not a political maneuver.”

“I never said – “

_ “Married,” _ she interrupted him.  “For the rest of my life.  To  _ you. _  To buy safe passage from Azcapa back to the border.”

“Abby, that wasn’t – “

“No, it was a _beautiful_ proposal,” she said, “very romantic.  The way you asked for my hand in marriage.  From _ Roan _ .”

“You know perfectly well,” he said, feeling his own temper rise as he stood and made his way over to her, “that you’re describing what happened completely inaccurately.”

“Oh, am I?”

“I’m not trading pawns with Roan of Azgeda for political power,” he shot back at her, trying to bite back his mounting irritation, “I was trying my damndest to keep you from getting carted off by Ice Nation bounty hunters.   _ Again _ .”

“What’s that ‘again’ supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then you wouldn’t have said it.”

“For God’s sake, Abby, I’m not blaming you for getting captured by Ice Nation.”

“Then why are you suddenly about to explode in my face?”

“Because I thought I’d  _ lost _ you!” he finally snapped at her, every emotion he’d been holding in since the moment he’d realized she was missing bursting out of him at once, and whatever sharp retort she’d been about to make died in her mouth as she saw the pain in his dark brown eyes.  “I sat in that car, cursing it for not being able to go faster, cursing the roads for being so slow, sick to my stomach from the thought of what might happen if we were too late or we couldn’t find you.  For God's sake, I almost let Clarke walk into the Ice Nation capitol with a _gun_ in her back pocket.”

“Marcus, you didn’t," she exclaimed in horror.  


“No, I didn’t,” he agreed.  “But I considered it for half a second longer than I should have.  The thought of what might have happened to you if I’d been a minute later – “

“But you weren’t,” she said, and he could see it as though it was a physical thing, the wrath beginning to drain out of her.  “You were there, Marcus.  You said it yourself.  We’ll always find each other.”

“You were in danger,” he said.  “You’ll be in danger again.  If there’s a way to prevent that, if there’s anything I can do to keep you safe, I’ll do it.  You have to believe me, Abby, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe.”

“God, you don’t even  _ hear  _ yourself, do you?” she snapped, temper flaring back up again quick as lightning, and he reared back, startled.  “You’ll do  _ anything _ to keep me safe.  Like it’s a  _ sacrifice _ .  Like the marriage is a _ price _ .”

“Abby, no,” he exclaimed, “that’s not – I would never – “

“How do you think it makes me feel,” she said, “that you’re binding yourself to me forever just to get me out of Azgeda alive?  I know you’re trying to protect me, Marcus, and I love you for that, I do, but every time you say this marriage is what it _costs you_ to keep me safe?  It feels like a slap in the face.”

“Abby!”

“It hasn’t even been two months,” she went on relentlessly, refusing to be silenced, “and I know that we love each other, but if we’ve learned anything on the ground, it’s that nothing here is certain, and what if a year from now one of us doesn’t – “

“Abby,  _ don’t,” _ he said urgently, his blood running cold, the fear in her eyes making him feel sick and heavy in the pit of his stomach because how could he have been so blind?  

She loved him, but she hadn't let go of Jake.  It was too soon, and this was cruel, this wasn't fair, he'd hurt her in the worst way she could be hurt because he had known what her husband meant to her.  She wore his ring around her neck still.  She hadn’t taken it off, and he’d never asked her to, because Jake Griffin deserved to be remembered.  Jake Griffin should be the one standing here with Abby right now, the one driving that Rover through the forest with his daughter at his side to save the woman he loved.  This was a woman who knew what forever felt like and Marcus pressed his eyes closed, desperately fighting back the sharp mortifying sting of tears as the realization crashed down upon his shoulders that she was trying to tell him there was no forever for them.

_ She doesn’t want to be married to you, _ said a dark voice in his head, over and over and over, and he had to force himself to remember how to breathe.   _ She does not want to be your wife. _

“If that’s how you really feel,” he said dully, and she nodded, expressionless.  


“That’s how I really feel."  


“Fine.  I’ll talk to Roan in the morning.”

“It’s for the best,” she said firmly.  “You’ll thank me one day.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” he said, a flash of anger in his voice slipping through despite his best efforts, and it stopped her halfway to the door.

“Our guard was down on the road when we came up here,” she said.  "That's all it was.  It wasn't your fault, Marcus, you don't have to _atone_ for this."  


“What are you talking about?”

“We weren’t expecting trouble,” she said, “so we weren’t paying attention.  I know I wasn’t.”

“Neither was I.”

“Right,” she said.  “So we won’t make that mistake a second time.  We’ll have Roan and his guards, and it’s less than three days from here to the border.”

“It’s dangerous, Abby.”

“Our whole lives are dangerous, Marcus,” she said wearily.  “I know you love me and I know you want to keep me safe, but even for you, going through with some elaborate Grounder ritual to prop up a sham marriage just to get me home in one piece is a ridiculously complicated plan.  Get some sleep, we’ll think of something else in the morning.” 

She turned the knob and opened the door to step out into the hallway.

“Mount Weather,” he said quietly, and she froze.  “That was what it felt like, racing up here in the Rover and hunting for you all over the castle.  It was Mount Weather all over again.”

“Marcus,” she whispered, but didn’t turn around.

“That’s how it feels every time,” he told her.  “Every time you’re hurt, or you’re in danger, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to save you.  It’s like seeing you strapped down to an operating table with a drill in your leg, and my hands are chained to the wall and I can’t stop it.”

“Marcus – “

“You’ve saved me over and over,” he said.  “You saved me from the man I used to be on the Ark.  You saved me from being the wrong Chancellor for our people.  You saved my life when we were trapped underground.  Every setback, every injury, every mark on my soul.  You’re right there, every time.  And yet when you need me, I’m always afraid I’m going to be too late.”

She turned back to him then, eyes shining with tears.  “You don’t think you've saved me, too?” she asked in astonishment.  “Marcus, do you not know how much I need you?”

“Abby – “

“That’s why I can’t do this,” she whispered.  “I can’t go through with this, Marcus.  I couldn’t bear to watch you realize the moment you made a mistake.  When you wake up one morning and you realize that you made a commitment for life but it isn’t what you want.”

Marcus felt his heart stop beating.  He stared at her, his eyes wide with astonishment. “Abby,” he said slowly.  “Do you – you think  _ I’m _ the one that doesn’t want to marry  _ you _ ?”

“Marcus, you  _ don’t _ want to marry me,” she sighed, exasperated.  “This is what you  _ always _ do.  You step in front of the bullet to save somebody else.  But it’s not worth sticking you with a wife you didn’t want for the rest of your life, just to keep me safe on the road for three days.”

Marcus felt the cold iron cage clamped around his heart begin to ease open, and his breathing returned to normal.  Something that might have been a smile flickered across his face.  “I think we got some wires crossed,” he said in a low, warm voice and he slipped a hand around her waist to settle on the small of her back.

“Marcus,” she began warningly, but didn’t push him away.

“I thought  _ you _ were the one who didn’t want  _ me _ ,” he murmured, resting his forehead against hers, and she looked up at him in astonishment.

“How could you possibly think that?”

“Because the moment it came up, you got quiet and you wouldn’t look at me anymore.”

_“Marcus,”_ she sighed, fond exasperation beginning to win out over wounded pride and anger.  “You didn’t even  _ ask _ me.  You just threw it out there to Roan like it was for  _ him _ to decide, like the only thing that mattered was the political tactic.  It wasn’t exactly the grand romantic gesture I’d imagined.”

“Oh,” he said, realizing as she spoke that she was right, realizing how calculated it must have sounded to her.  She couldn’t read his mind, she couldn’t know that he’d been unable to think about anything else since the very first moment he’d kissed her.  She’d heard only what was said out loud - two kings brokering a deal.  “I didn’t think about the proposal part of it,” he confessed.  “I was only thinking about the part where you’d be my – wait a minute,” he cut himself off suddenly, realizing what she’d said.  “What do you mean, it wasn’t what you _ imagined _ ?” 

She looked away, suddenly shy, and a smile lit up his face like the sun was rising.  He took her by the hand, pulled her back inside from where she stood half-in, half-out of the hallway, and closed the door behind her.  

“You’ve thought about this too,” he accused her, arms folded.

“Well, of course I have.”

“About you and me.  Getting married.”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since Polis.”

“And you’re really so thick-headed,” he said, blithely ignoring her irritated glare, “that you thought the only reason I asked was for the sake of three days’ diplomatic immunity to get you out of Sector Eight?”

“What was I  _ supposed _ to think, when the first time the topic was ever brought up was to  _ Roan  _ instead of me?”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Not for awhile at least, no,” she agreed, and he could sense the beginnings of a laugh bubbling up inside her. 

“Will it help,” he said, “if I ask you properly?”

“That would help a lot, yes.”

“All right,” he said agreeably.  “Then I will.”

“Good,” she said, and fell silent, waiting. 

“Well, I can’t do it  _ now _ ,” he protested.  “You wanted a grand romantic gesture.  If I do it now it’s just because you _told_ me to.”

“Marcus – “

“No, you’re right, I learned my lesson,” he grinned at her.  “I’m going to do this properly.  Now come here.” 

Then his hand went around her waist and his mouth descended to hers and neither of them said anything for a long, long, long time.

When he finally pulled away, Abby was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes too. “What did you mean before?” she asked him.  “What you started to say about Jake.”

“Abby, we don’t have to – “

No, it’s all right,” she said gently.  “I want to know.  What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say that I understood why you didn’t – if you didn’t feel ready to – “  He stopped, trying to collect himself, trying to say it right.  This was important.  “You were with Jake for more than twenty years,” he began.  “You raised a child together.  He was your whole life.  But you and me . . . we knew each other, back then, but it wasn’t like this.  And even down here on the ground, it hasn’t been – I mean, the difference between three months and twenty years is . . .”  He trailed off, unable to meet her eyes suddenly.  “I wouldn’t want you to think I was asking for you to give me any part of you that still belonged to Jake,” he said finally.  “That’s all I meant.  I wanted you to know that I understand it isn’t the same.  I know that I wouldn’t be . . . “

“Stop,” she said gently.  “Marcus, listen.  That isn’t how this works.”  She placed her hand on his arm.  “You think it’s a physical thing that runs out, you think it’s like pouring out a glass of water.  Half the glass was already gone by the time you got here, so you only get what’s left.  But you’re wrong.  Hearts don’t work like that.”

“Abby – “

“I don’t love you less because you were second,” she said.  “That isn’t how love works.  That isn’t how _ any _ of this works.  It’s not a half-full glass of water, Marcus, it’s a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.  I had twenty years to love a husband and a daughter and it’s because of them that I love you the way that I do.”

“I didn’t have that,” he said softly, and she smiled and kissed his mouth.

“You’re doing fine,” she said, running a gentle hand through his hair.  “You’re doing just fine.”

“Still,” he said, “I would never ask – I would never presume – not after only three months – “

“Jake and I got engaged after six weeks,” she said matter-of-factly, and he stared at her.

“What?”

“Yep.”

“No,” he shook his head, “that can’t be right.  I remember the engagement party.  And that was a year after.  No, almost two.”

That was when we  _ told _ people,” she corrected him.  “My parents wanted me to finish medical school before I made any kind of commitment like that, so we didn’t say anything to anyone else.  But I knew after the first month.  And if he hadn’t asked me two weeks later, I’d have asked him.”  She looked up at Marcus, smiling, caressing his temple with her fingertips, and he closed his eyes, sinking into her, letting himself be touched, letting himself be soothed.  “Some people just  _ know _ ,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice.  “Three months might be more than enough time for some people where three years isn’t enough time for others.  But I knew I wanted to marry Jake, the same way I know I want to marry you.”

“It isn’t the same, though.”

“Of course it’s not,” she agreed, as if he were blind.  “I’m not the same person.  I was twenty then.  I’m forty-two now.   _ Nothing _ is the same.  But that doesn’t mean we’re not right where we’re supposed to be, Marcus,” she went on gently.  “You and I, we would never have been ready for each other twenty years ago.  Think of all the things we had to go through to become the people we are right now, to become people who belong together.  This is exactly where we’re supposed to be,” she said, caressing his cheek.  “This is how it was  _ always _ meant to happen.”

“Really?” he said skeptically, “a shotgun Azgeda wedding is how you always planned this?”

Abby laughed and laughed, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest.  “Honest to God, Marcus Kane,” she said, “if I get to be your wife, I don’t much care how it happens.”

“I was rooting for that sexy orange dress you wore in Polis,” he said, kissing the top of her head, “but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

“It’s snowing, you realize,” she pointed out.  “Did you imagine me dying of hypothermia before we get to the I do’s?”

“Now you’re exaggerating.” 

“Also, you realize you still haven’t actually _asked_ me.”

“Oh, I know.”

She laughed again, then pulled away from him to take the tray with the mulled wine and cups over to the fireplace, where she set it down next to the pile of furs he’d heaped there to sleep on.

“Two pillows,” she observed dryly.

He shrugged.  “What can I say,” he said.  “I’m an optimist.”

“And a correct one, this time,” she said, something warm and alluring humming in her voice, and he swallowed hard as he watched her step out of her boots.

He extinguished the oil lamps hanging on the wall, leaving the room lit only by the flames in the hearth, and then moved slowly towards her, as though drawn by a magnetic force, and watched her undress.  She pulled off her thick wool socks first, piling them on the floor with her boots, then shed the leather Grounder coat she was still wearing, along with her heavy sweater.  He swallowed hard as her black bra came into view, the pale swell of her breasts rising up out of the cups, and then even harder as her hands drifted down to the buttons at her waist, and with a soft _snap, snap_ and the slide of a zipper, her jeans slid down off her hips.

He hadn’t had her like this in so long.  It had been rushed and cold and frantic last night (God, was it only last night? It felt like ages ago) on that rock by the side of the road, and it had been nearly a month before that since he’d been parted from her.  He drank it in, the way she smiled at him, slow and soft and content, stepping gracefully out of first her jeans, then her underwear, and then finally her bra, leaving her entirely naked before him.  The firelight illuminated her white body, making it seem to glow from within like moonlight, burnishing her braids in flickers of red-gold, and even though he was standing underneath the window where a sharp night breeze swirled around him, sparkling with frost, he felt suffused with a glorious molten heat that was more than just the fire.

“Now you,” she said, smiling at him, and seated herself comfortably on the heap of furs to pour herself a cup of mulled wine and watch him take off his clothes.

He wasn’t graceful about it, like she was.  He tore out of them as fast as he could, with all the brisk efficiency of a man who used to be a soldier, and then sank down beside her on the heap of furs to cradle her in his arms with all the desperate tenderness of a man who never wanted to be a soldier again.

“Marcus,” she murmured, pressing her lips into the hollow of his throat.  “I missed you so much.” 

He didn’t answer her with words, but poured a few drops of the richly-spiced wine into one of the cups.  It was impossibly delicate in his hand, carved from some kind of ivory or bone that was so thin it was nearly translucent, and the heat seeped through to warm his hands.  He dipped his fingertips gently into the cup and startled the breath out of Abby’s lungs by trickling droplets of warm, fragrant wine along her collarbone, then bending low to kiss her skin and drink it up with his tongue.

Abby shivered.  “Marcus,” she whispered, but he shook his head and lowered her onto her back, the soft furs heaped above and below her.

“I want to taste you,” he murmured.  “Close your eyes.”

So she let go of resistance, sinking back into the soft animal-scented warmth of the furs, and she closed her eyes, and hissed a sharp intake of breath as Marcus kept going, trickling warm droplets of mulled wine all over her body – throat, shoulders, breasts, belly, thighs – and then lowering his mouth to her skin, sending shivers of pleasure all up and down her body.  The sensations were so fierce that they began to blur together into a haze, making her feel soft and loose and a little dizzy.  By the time she heard him set down the cup of wine, she felt as warm and languid all over as if she’d spent hours in a hot bath. 

Then she felt his hands slide up her inner thighs, opening her up, and then there it was, the thing she’d missed, that she’d craved for so long it had begun to drive her mad with longing.  He nuzzled deeply into her, making her cry out with hot, desperate pleasure, and as he sank deeper into her she could feel him smiling.

His mouth was sure and firm against her aching, frantic wetness, and a wave of climax rushed over her before she even realized it was happening.  “Marcus,” she whispered.  “Marcus, please.  I need you.”  She clutched at his shoulders, pulling him back up to her, and as his mouth descended against hers, wild and urgent, she felt him shift his weight onto her body and she reached up to run her hands through his hair.  “Please,” she murmured.

“Abby,” he said in a low, rough voice.  “Oh God, Abby.”  And with a heavy, thick groan, he slid smoothly inside her.

For a long, long moment, neither of them moved.  She simply held him there, cradling him in her arms, savoring the sweet weight of his body on hers, pressing her down into the infinite softness below them that smelled like animal and forest.   _ This. _  This had been the part they hadn’t had time for, coupling frantically on a cold rock in the middle of the night, sanding down the knife-sharp edge of their starvation so they could sleep.  There had been no time for _this_ , for the pine-and-leather scent of him, the warmth of his breath, the way his skin tasted like salt when she reached out to brush it lightly with her tongue, for the way he stared down at her with wide, dazed eyes the very first moment he entered her, as though he were holding an impossibly rare jewel in his hand.  There had been no time to savor the way he filled her, the deep place inside that he touched every time he entered her body.  So for a long time, she just wrapped her arms around him and opened her thighs and breathed him in until she felt their heartbeats begin to pulse to the same rhythm.  Then he began to move inside her, and she was lost.

“I don’t ever want to be apart from you again,” he breathed into the white skin of her throat, and her arms tightened around him.  “I want to go to bed with you every night and wake up beside you every morning.  I want to be yours until the day that I die, Abby Griffin,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and jagged with panting raw breath, her soft slick warmth pulling him deeper and deeper inside her as she gasped and trembled in his arms.  “I want us to belong to each other.  This is forever to me.  You are  _ forever _ to me.  And I want everyone else in the world to know.  I want you,” he breathed, pulling away just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, cradling her face in his hands, watching her parted lips gasp for breath as her hips rose up off the mattress to capture more of him.   _ “Ai hod yu in, Skaiplana _ ,” he whispered.  “ _ Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun.” _

“Marcus,” she gasped.  “I’m so close . . .” 

So he slipped his hand down between their bodies and his fingertips found their way home to the hot, pulsing wet bud at her center, which had been aching for his touch for so long that her whole body jolted with an electric shock as he began, very lightly, to stroke her. 

“Abby,” he whispered, cupping her cheek in his other hand and looking down at her as she stared up at him with wide, pleasure-dazed eyes.  “Will you marry me?”

_ “Yes,” _ she cried out in a desperate, shattering moan as her climax roared through her body, clutching wildly at his back and shuddering against him.  “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

And as his own orgasm followed, as he burst deep inside her with a roar, burying his beard in the soft hollow of her throat, he dissolved inside her strong arms and felt her cradle him close against her soft body, and they both knew in that moment that, Grounder ritual or no, they were husband and wife already in all the ways that mattered.

_ “You’re forever to me,” _ he had said, and as they sank into a deep, peaceful sleep, they both knew that it was true.


	7. Wedding Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild self-harm triggers. There's a blood ritual thing in the wedding vows. Not gory at all, but just in case anyone needs a heads-up!

The first sensation Abby became aware of, as she drifted lazily from sleep into waking, was a blissful heat that suffused her entire body.  She pressed her eyes closed, willing herself to stay in this warm haze as long as she could, dreading the moment the illusion would finally, inevitably fall away from her.  As it always did.

It had been like this every morning since they’d taken Marcus away.  She tossed and turned all night long, fighting to press back dark dreams and sick, anxious knots of panic in her stomach, locked in a violent battle with sleep.  She was trying so hard to be everything that everyone needed - to be a good doctor, to be strong for Octavia and Harper and Miller, to be brave the way Marcus would want her to be, and to hold onto the faith he still had in Bellamy, because there was nobody else left who did.  She was doing the best she could.  But sleep came hard to Abby Griffin, alone again in a cold bed while the man she loved was gone, and most days it was all she could do to get out of bed in the morning after struggling against wakefulness all night.

But every once in awhile, exhaustion overtook her accompanied by dreams of Marcus, and those nights she slept almost well.  She could almost breathe easily again, then.  She could almost forget.  They were achingly real, those dreams; she would feel his strong chest pressed up against her back, just like she did now, and the alchemy of dreaming pulled her love for him outward and transformed it into physical sensations she could feel all over her body.  His warm arms around her, holding her close, keeping her safe.  The soft sleepy purr of his breathing, soothing her, rushing warm and sweet over her shoulder.  His heartbeat, even and slow in the gentle rhythm of sleep.  Love.  All of it.  Love transmuted into a physical thing she could feel against her skin.

And then she would wake up, and he would be gone.

She wondered, from time to time, which of the two was actually worse.  Was it the anxiety, the sleeplessness, the long nights lying awake staring at the ceiling with her hands clenched so tightly into fists that her fingernails dug into the palm of her hand, forcing the tears back down because once she started she feared she'd never stop?  Or was the real nightmare the beautiful illusion, the soft, golden warmth of waking up in Marcus Kane’s arms, believing that it had all been a terrible dream, that there was no Pike, that there was no Farm Station, that the brig was as empty now as it had been when she was Chancellor, that she knew exactly where Marcus was because he was _here_ . . . and then slowly feeling the cold horror of reality creep over her as the dream slipped further and further away, while she clutched at it desperately, fruitlessly, like trying to catch smoke in your hands?

Reality, or illusion?

Neither, she decided.  Or maybe both.

The dream was so real this morning, though, that she could not bring herself to open her eyes.  Not yet.  Not when she could feel every detail of his warm naked body wrapped around hers.  Not when she could smell his musky scent, hear the comforting rush of his breathing, feel his mouth begin to move against the skin of her throat . . .

 _Please,_ she begged whoever was listening, if anyone was _.  Please.  Just let me stay in this moment a little longer.  Please don’t make me let him go just yet._

Then, “ _Christ,_ I’m hungry,” came a low voice muffled in her hair, which was new, and everything that had happened in the last three days came rushing back to her.

She rolled over to look at him and couldn’t suppress the glow of pure delight that beamed out of her shining eyes as all the tension in her body flowed out of her.  “You’re here,” was all she said, but he knew exactly what she meant.

“I am,” he agreed, stroking her hair.  “And you’re here too.  We didn’t dream it.”

“No,” Abby murmured. “We didn’t dream it.”  And she couldn’t let go of him, he was so real and warm and solid and right here with her, he was _hers,_ he belonged to her, and the weight of his body was like a shaft of sunlight piercing through dark clouds, bringing back to her all the hope she’d been afraid was lost.

The world was a troubling and perilous place, but her family had made it through.  Clarke was here, safe and whole and strong, and there was nothing they could not accomplish together because Marcus was alive and in her arms and everything was possible.   

“I didn’t dream the part where I asked you to marry me, did I?” Marcus asked, brow furrowed in concern, and she laughed.

“No,” she grinned at him, “I _definitely_ remember that.”

“Good.”

“You’re going to be my husband today, Marcus Kane,” she said, the words tumbling joyously out of her mouth like water bubbling up from a spring, and his face lit up.

“You’re going to be my wife,” he said, and pressed a soft kiss against her mouth, smiling.  “I don’t imagine I’ll ever get tired of saying that.”

“It will feel strange the first time you say it out loud,” she cautioned him.  “It may take some getting used to.”

“No, it won’t,” he said, unhesitating, and something in his insistent certainty sent shivers all up and down her body.  It did something to her, the way he knew exactly what he wanted.  There had been moments in the past, she was forced to admit to herself, when the stubbornness of Marcus Kane had infuriated her so deeply that she would have happily shoved him out an airlock.  But it was impossible not to be moved by it when the thing he was so certain about was _her._

She shifted a little to lay her head against his chest and felt, with a thrill of delight, the telltale sign that his body was very much awake.  He inhaled sharply at the sudden contact as she pressed in closer, entangling her limbs with his, wrapping herself around him, lying down along his chest and deeply inhaling the warm male scent of him.  Her soft small hand slipped down between his thighs, drawn towards the source of heat, and she grasped him firmly, grinning as he hissed a light intake of breath at her touch.

“Good morning,” she said wryly.

“Good morning to you."  And he responded in kind by sliding one strong, rough hand up her thighs to clutch at her hip while the other tangled into her hair, pulling her mouth down to crash against his.  She kissed him back hungrily, tasting his soft panting breaths as his chest rose and fell beneath her, synced to the rhythm of her hand.   “It’s traditional,” he managed to choke out between sharp gasps, as her soft mouth trailed ribbons of kisses along his throat and shoulders and chest before settling in to flick softly at his nipples with her tongue, “for the bride and groom not to see each other the day of the wedding.  Or do anything like – oh! Oh, God, Abby – to do anything like _this._   Until the wedding night.”

“Screw tradition,” she murmured, the ghost of a laugh in her voice as she leaned forward to nip lightly at his bottom lip.  “You’re a king and I’m a queen, remember?”

“We’re in Azgeda,” Marcus pointed out.  “We don’t know anything about what kings and queens here do on their wedding day.”

“Well,” said Abby.  “I don’t know about ice queens.  But sky queens _always_ want to make love on the morning of their wedding day.”

“Oh, do they?” asked Marcus, raising an eyebrow.

“They do.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I’m the first one,” she said sensibly, “so I’m making the rules.”

“While the first Sky King finds a great deal to approve of in the first Sky Queen’s suggestion,” said Marcus, stroking her hair as she continued kissing her way across his chest, “the Ice King could walk in here at any minute and we really should have clothes on when he does.”

She made a soft little pouting noise, but made no move to get up.  Marcus had never been so torn in his life.  Roan had told them to be ready in the morning, but had failed to specify _when_ , and his desire to avoid embarrassment to himself or Abby was at war with his yearning to pull her into his arms and let his body have the thing it wanted more than anything else in the world.

“We need to get up and get dressed,” he said again, trying to sound as decisive as he could, but Abby didn’t fall for it.  She was, after all, holding in her hand the evidence of how badly he wanted to stay exactly where he was.

“Tell me to go, then,” she whispered breathlessly, holding herself above him in one swift, smooth movement, like a mermaid rising out of the water, her hair a caramel waterfall brushing silkily against his skin as she bent her forehead against his.  “Tell me to go, and I’ll go.”

“Abby – “

“Tell me to go, or take me inside you,” she said, her voice a rough sandpaper whisper, hoarse with desire, and he could feel her heat where his aching hardness was pressed against her flesh. 

“Oh God, Abby,” he whispered, closing his eyes against the wave of sensation crashing over him – the flutter of her hair, the rush of her breath, the soft press of her nipples brushing against his chest – and suddenly he couldn’t remember why he was resisting anymore, so he simply gave up and didn’t.  “Please,” he moaned into her soft white shoulder, his whole body rising up to meet hers.  “Please, Abby.  I need you.  Please.”

The way her eyes lit up, sparkling with delight and triumph, made his heart flip over in his chest.  In all his life, nobody had ever looked at Marcus Kane like that.  Nobody had ever been overwhelmed with joy just to be near him, the way Abby was.  Nobody had ever craved him this desperately.  Nobody had ever made him feel the way she felt. 

“I can’t believe how badly I want you,” Abby murmured, eyes shining with affection and wonder, as her hands slipped through his dark silky hair.  “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

 _“Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun, Haiplana,”_ he whispered as she parted her strong, slender thighs and sank down on top of him, and the last conscious thought in Marcus Kane’s mind – before he was enveloped by her warm, pulsing wetness and lost the ability to think straight – was how he couldn’t believe Abby thought _she_ was the lucky one.

* * * * *

Roan sent two servants up to their room with breakfast – some kind of rich, sweet grain porridge studded with dried fruits and topped with a generous splash of goat’s milk – and then, after they’d eaten, with their wedding clothes.  The pair spoke almost no English, only Trigedasleng, with the thick Northern accent Marcus had noticed in many of the Azcapa residents they’d encountered so far, making them slightly more difficult to understand.  They introduced both of themselves as _hangada_ – confusing both Marcus and Abby into thinking they had the same name for a moment, until it became clear – through repeated loud words and gestures – that the word meant “handmaiden.”  The older of the two, who appeared to be in a position of seniority, ushered Marcus roughly out the door to the adjoining bedroom – which apparently, he determined, was meant to have been his – and shoved him inside to dress him, while the younger one tended to Abby. 

Marcus was unable to strike up much of a rapport with his new companion, whose name he never did find out; she was far more gruff and taciturn than Lexa’s elegant royal staff in Polis had been, much less inclined to conversation.  Abby fared somewhat better with her _hangada,_ as the nearly silent young girl seemed to relax once the older servant – clearly her supervisor, and a stern taskmaster – was out of the room.  Her name was Lilith, and though she also spoke with a thick mountain accent, she was willing to go slow to accommodate Abby, and they eventually managed to find their way to something resembling a natural pace of conversation.  From Lilith, Abby learned that the king and queen would be dressed in separate rooms and led by separate staircases to a chamber adjoining the Great Hall, where there was, apparently, a sacred ritual to be performed in private before King Roan would lead them in for the actual ceremony.  The only word Abby recognized in her description of the ritual was “fleimstika,” the name for the brand Marcus bore on his arm, but Lilith laughed at Abby’s instant look of panic.  No, she reassured her.  “Nou skaren.”  No scars, only paint.

“Well, that’s fine,” said Abby.  “I can handle that.” 

Although frankly, she decided, as she looked at herself in the mirror in her Grounder finery, the fact that her body was going to be painted later was the only plausible explanation, in such a frosty landscape, for a wedding dress like this one.  She felt naked without the familiar armor of her comfortable jeans and jacket, and chilled by the frigid castle air against her skin.  Lilith draped a heavy fur cloak around her shoulders, pronounced her “meizen” ( _beautiful_ ), and led her by the hand towards the staircase.

She didn’t know why her pulse was suddenly racing.  She didn’t know why she found it suddenly impossible to breathe, why her heart pounded in rhythm with every step that brought her closer down the winding stone stairs and through the drafty wide hall toward the room where Marcus awaited her.  She wasn’t afraid – she was something like the opposite of that, in fact.  Fear had been an iron weight around her ankles, pulling her down and down into the darkness, every one of those twenty-five nights that Marcus was gone from her side.  This was nothing like that.  This was a kind of weightlessness, a sensation of rising that never seemed to leave her.  Like waking in the dark of night from a terrible dream and opening your eyes to find the sun.

 _Hope,_ she thought.  That’s what it was.  Because if the Marcus Kane she’d known on the Ark could fall to earth and become this man, then nothing in the world would ever be impossible again.

“Ogud?” asked Lilith gently, her hand on the doorknob, and Abby suddenly realized they’d arrived.

“Ogud,” she said back, never more sure of anything in her life.  “Ready.” 

Lilith opened the door.

“Hei, Skaiplana,” said King Roan, and Abby nodded back respectfully, but she hardly saw him.  She only had eyes for the tall, dark man facing her on the other side of the room.

* * * * *

Marcus could feel his heart hammering in his chest as the young servant girl pushed the door open, and Abby came into view, his entire body flushing warm and yearning at the sight of her.

She looked, simply, like a queen.

She was clothed all in white and gray, a wolf’s-fur cloak falling back over her shoulders that made her look a bit wolfish herself.  Lilith had braided her hair in a hybrid of the Ice Nation’s fashion – swept back from the temples to reveal the place where their ritual scars were traditionally placed – and her Skaikru braids, echoing the shape of Alpha Station, that had so dazzled him the first time he’d seen it in Polis.  Half her hair was caught up in a braided ring at the base of her skull, the rest falling loose over the bare skin revealed by the one-shoulder leather bodice of her pale dress, which was as snug as a second skin . . . and did things to the creamy swell of her breasts rising up inside it that Marcus found himself unable to tear his eyes away from.  It fell away from her hips in a long, straight skirt of thick wool that might once, a century ago, have been white, and had faded over the years to a gray so soft and delicate it was almost blue, trimmed in a white-and-gray fur.  When he finally managed to drag his gaze away from the slope of her breasts cresting the top of her bodice, he was amply rewarded with the realization that her skirt was slit on both sides so high up her smooth white thigh that he was forced to swallow, hard, at the thought of the silken skin beneath it.

Abby, meanwhile, could not tear her eyes off Marcus either.  He was shirtless, which was the first thing she noticed, with a heavy brown fur-trimmed cloak fastened over his broad strong chest.  Her eyes caressed his sun-browned skin, the pelt of dark hair she had so recently been kissing, and descended lower to see that he was clad in the same fitted leather trousers and high boots that Roan wore.  And he too, she noted with delight, looked like a Grounder, a lock of his shaggy dark hair braided back from each temple and fastened with leather. 

 _“_ _Mochof_ _,_ Lilith,” said Roan, and waved her away.  She bowed and left, closing the door noiselessly behind her. 

They were in a small, dimly lit room, warm with candles and the heavy scent of incense, and from the hushed babble of voices Abby guessed that the heavy wooden door on the far side of the room opened into the great hall, where all of Azcapa was waiting to witness the king and queen’s marriage. 

“The ritual of the war paint must be performed in this room,” said Roan.  “Then the wedding can begin.”  He fetched a bowl full of thick white paint from inside a battered lacquer cabinet and motioned them to stand side by side, facing him. “For most weddings,” he explained, “the couple’s parents perform this ritual.  But this is a formal affair of state, and will add legitimacy to the ceremony if the king adorns you himself.”

His voice was stoic, formal, and so they nodded back with equally serious faces.  But Roan’s eyes flickered down to where the back of Abby’s hand brushed ever so lightly against Marcus’ own, as they stood side by side, and the ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.  “Take his hand,” he told Abby, “if you like.  It will help if you try not to move too much, or speak,” he added, “since the paint will take a moment to dry and I have no wish to redo all my careful handiwork.”

“I’m very pleased it’s only paint,” said Abby, “and not something more painful.”

“Oh,” said Roan apologetically, “Lilith should have said.  In order to be legally binding, Azgeda’s marriage rite requires ritual tattoos on the back and shoulders.”

“What?”

“It should take no more than five to six hours,” he assured her.  “We have plenty of time.”

_“What?”_

“He’s teasing you, Abby,” said Marcus mildly, and Abby looked up to see Roan regarding her with what might almost have been a smile.

“Just lightening the mood,” said Roan, in a tone of dry amusement.  “Weddings can be very stressful.”

“It could be worse,” said Marcus cheerfully.  “It could be face scars.  I’m not convinced I could pull off that look as well as Roan does.”

“I wouldn’t sell yourself short,” said Roan in a low voice, stepping in close with the bowl of paint in his hand, and even though his expression was – as always – nearly impossible to read, Abby felt a peculiar sizzle of electricity shoot through her body.  “Close your eyes,” Roan said to Marcus, and he did.  “Oh, and take off the cloak.”

“He’ll freeze,” Abby protested.

“He won’t,” Roan demurred.  “It’s warmer in the Great Hall than you think.  And the paint has to show.  You can’t wear yours either.”

“I can’t?”

“You have to look like Ice Nation,” he said, and Marcus could hear the smile in his voice.  “Ice Nation already thinks Skaikru is soft and weak and could never withstand one of our winters.  Do you want to prove them right?”

“Fine,” Abby sighed, and she carefully reached up to unfasten the gold knot at Kane’s throat, pulling off his cloak, and lying it down on the table.  Then he heard a heavy, thick rushing sound – Abby pulling her cloak off too.  Marcus thought about how much bared skin would soon be revealed to him and swallowed hard.

Maybe it was the incense – musky and heady and spiced with some potent fragrance.  Or maybe it was the warmth from the candles on every surface, draining the chill out of their bones and replacing it with a languid, rich heat.  Or maybe it was something deeper and more secret than that, a thing that lived deep inside them, a pulsing excitement at the enormity of the cliff they were about to hold hands and dive off together.  But whatever it was, a strange sensation swept over them both as Roan’s fingers, and the strange liquid sensation of the paint, brushed over their skin.

It was different for Abby, Marcus found himself thinking, as Roan traced marks all over his temples to simulate the place where ritual Ice Nation scars would be.  She had shared a bed for twenty years, she had given birth to and nursed a child.  Touch was something that came easily to her; it was the way she showed her heart to you.  But the handful of weeks he had fallen asleep with Abby in his arms had not been enough, yet, not quite enough, to accustom him to being touched with kindness.  So when Roan’s rough fingers first touched his forehead, he felt himself flinch, just a little.  With his eyes closed, he heard Roan set the bowl down beside him, freeing up his other hand, which he rested on Marcus’ bare shoulder, steadying them both.  His touch was warm and strong, and little by little, Marcus felt his tension ease.  He felt cool, paint-covered fingers trace down his temples and around his eyes, then graze his collarbone with a swirling pattern of lines, before moving down lower to run firm, sure strokes down his chest. 

Roan had told them to hold still, so Marcus breathed hard, trying not to shiver, conflicted by the odd sensations that flickered all over his body at the peculiar experience of having paint applied to his body.  After his face, neck, shoulders and chest had been adorned, Roan said “Turn around,” with something strangely vibrant in his voice.  So Marcus did.

The soft thick dampness of the sharp-smelling paint, Roan’s firm insistent fingers tracing along the triangles of Marcus’ muscled shoulderblades, Abby’s hand in his, the smell of the incense, Roan’s other hand resting casually on Marcus’ hip to steady him . . . Marcus was feeling so many different things at once he felt his head begin to swim.  By the time Roan finished and turned his attention to Abby, his whole body felt warm all over.

And watching Roan paint Abby did nothing to help him compose himself.  His touch with Abby – just as it had been with him – was nothing if not sober and respectful, conducting himself with all the seriousness of a king performing a holy rite.  Yet Marcus could see Abby too responding to the moment in a peculiar way, her whole body softening at the strange sensation of paint on skin.

Roan began at Abby’s temples and forehead as well, then traced a swirl of curving lines down her throat and along the tops of her shoulders before brushing his fingers along her collarbone and low enough to just barely crest the top of Abby’s breasts.  He was very proper about it, and Abby was too, but Marcus could feel her hand tighten imperceptibly in his own, not letting go until Roan – after tracing elaborate patterns along her arms and back, then kneeling to the ground to run a line of white paint up the side of her calf to her thigh – finally rose to his feet and stepped away.

“It will take a moment to dry,” he said, “don’t move.”

Which, as an instruction, was unnecessary; neither of them could have moved or spoken if they had wanted to.  They stood still, side by side, hand in hand, feeling the soft wet coolness against their skin dry and harden until it felt like armor . . . until they felt like a Grounder king and queen.

Then, “It’s time,” said Roan, who knocked twice on the heavy wooden door, which opened with a flourish of horns and drums, as the King of the Ice Nation led his royal guests into the Great Hall to their wedding.

* * * * *

Roan led them down the long center aisle towards the dais where a stately Clarke – draped in a flowing gown the color of a gray-blue winter sky, her hair gleaming in the cool white sunshine like polished gold – stood waiting beside the glittering throne.

It was nothing like it had been yesterday, Marcus thought _(dear God, was it only yesterday?)_ , when he had last made his way through this throng of people.  He had been an interloper then, nearly a prisoner, nearly too late, shoving his way through a wall of bodies to make his way to Abby.  Now the crowd parted before them, as effortlessly smooth as a knife through silk, and the crowd of Azgedans bowing to their Hefa kept their heads respectfully lowered for the visiting king and queen who followed behind him as well, and Marcus felt a surge of elation in his heart.

_This would work._

_This was going to work._

Abby would be safe, and she would be his wife, and suddenly everything felt possible.

 _“Azgedakru!”_ Roan announced as they reached the foot of the dais, silencing the room, and Clarke stepped down to stand beside her mother, holding a broad flat wooden box.  “Oso hit choda op deyon hashta ai op Markus en Abi kom Skaikru tai choda op kom jus.” _(People of Azegeda!  We come together today to watch Marcus and Abby of the Sky People bind each other in blood.)_

Then Clarke opened the box, revealing two slim bands of braided metal, which Roan placed on their heads – Abby first, then Marcus – causing a rush of movement and commotion behind them.  As Marcus turned he saw that the entire room was now kneeling.

The royal wedding had begun.

It had seemed astonishing to a much younger Marcus, the first time his mother told him how she’d been so full of emotion on the day of her wedding that she hardly remembered it, and he hadn’t quite believed her.  It had always seemed to him such a momentous thing, binding yourself to someone for life, and he couldn’t imagine undertaking such a commitment and not being able later to recall every last detail of that moment. 

But Vera had been as right about this as she was about everything.

The ceremony lasted for more than an hour, with Clarke – who had clearly rehearsed with Roan – serving as witness and acolyte.  There were long recitations in Trigedasleng from some massive dusty book, which blurred together in Marcus’ mind, and there was a communal prayer of some sort where the entire gathered crowd spoke some words in unison, and a number of other things happening dimly at his periphery that he barely noticed at all.  But he remembered every detail of Abby’s face, as she stood looking up at him, shoulders squared, chin held high, her whole body alive with unhesitating certainty.  He remembered the way the cold blue light of a cloudless winter morning streamed in from the high windows and shone on her hair.  He remembered the way she never stopped smiling, not once, the way the smile seemed to come from her whole body, a smile so vast he could almost feel it as a physical thing.  He remembered the way her thumbs stroked his skin lightly, over and over, without ceasing, as she held his hands in her own, as though even this little amount of distance between them – as they stood in their formal Grounder finery – was too much for her, was too long a time for her to endure without being able to caress him.  Every detail of Abby was so clear that it felt branded onto his memory like the clan mark on his skin.  A hundred years could go by and he would still be able to conjure it up, the warm sparkle of her dark eyes and the way even inside the swirling frosty air of the drafty ballroom, Abby’s hands in his were warm.

He was startled out of his reverie by the approach of Roan, holding a gleaming knife, Clarke at his side with a silver bowl full of water and a white cloth.  This part, Roan had explained to them earlier, was the sacred rite that consecrated their holy vows to each other, and concluded the formal ceremony.

“Repeat after me,” he said in a quiet voice, with a hum of something powerful in it, and the weight of this solemn ritual echoed around Marcus. After this, they would truly be married.  He was about to become her husband.  She was about to become his wife. “’Ai laik Markus, Skaihefa.’”

“Ai laik Markus, Skaihefa,” he repeated, unable to tear his eyes off Abby as Roan reached down and gently untangled their hands from each other to lift up Marcus’ right palm.

“’Ai laik Abi, Skaiplana,’” said Roan, lifting her hand up as well, and she repeated the words after him, smiling up at Marcus.   “’Ai hod yu in en nou moun,’” Roan continued, prompting them with their next line.  “’Ai sonraun laik yu sonraun.’ ”   _(I love you and no other.  My life is your life.)_

Marcus repeated the words, slow and careful, wanting to get them perfectly, wanting to draw out this moment to make it last, savoring the way the sounds felt in his mouth, then feeling them like a palpable thing as Abby said them back.  It was as though their future was tied to the end of a silver cord, and every word pulled it closer and closer, until by the time they both finished speaking it would be right there in their hands.

Roan passed the blade of the shining silver knife in his hand through one of the heavy, flickering candles nearby on a tall metal stand, then motioned Clarke over to him.  He dipped the blade into her bowl of water, causing it to sizzle faintly, and traced three circles in the water before pulling it out and drying it on the white cloth draped over Clarke’s arm.

“Ogud?” he asked both of them, very quietly, turning both of their palms outstretched towards him, knife drawn, and they nodded.  Yes.  They were ready.

He handed the knife first to Marcus, who felt no pain as he drew its gleaming blade across the palm of his hand, speaking the words as Roan instructed him.  "Ai laik yun houmon feva en otaim,” he said to her softly.  “Yu laik ain seingeda en ain hou.  Ai swega raun faya en jus.”  And as Roan took the knife back and handed it to Abby, Marcus felt as though he had never spoken truer words in his whole life than these:

_I am your spouse forever and always.  You are my family and my home.  I swear in fire and blood._

Abby took the knife from Roan’s hand, and she too drew a long slice across the center of her palm.  The knife was impeccably sharpened, leaving only the faintest thread of crimson, and she too felt no pain as she looked up at Marcus and spoke the words in a soft warm voice.   _“_ Ai laik yun houmon feva en otaim.  Yu laik ain seingeda en ain hou.  Ai swega raun faya en jus.”

Then she took his hand in hers, pressing blood to blood, and it was done.

They were married.

The crowd began to recite another Trigedasleng blessing as Roan took the white cloth, tore off two strips, and nodded at Abby, who handed the knife back to her daughter.

 _No,_ thought Marcus suddenly, with an almost physical sensation of shock.

 _Their_ daughter.

Marcus looked at Clarke as though seeing her for the first time, realizing that in the chaotic rush of the past day, in the desperate last-ditch formulation of this plan, the near-catastrophic misunderstanding last night with Abby, and the mayhem of preparing for a royal wedding with one day’s notice, that this was the one piece of the equation he had not truly understood.

The thought had occurred to him before, of course.  In some ways, he had thought of it even before he truly understood how he felt about Abby.  

Marcus had never had children, had never particularly wanted them, and remained uncertain what kind of father he would have been to a baby, to someone small and vulnerable and in constant need of his care.  But Clarke was eighteen, tough and clever, with a mind like his, and even though before he landed on the ground with her mother, he had not spoken a word to her since the day he arrested her, they had built a careful mutual trust, bit by bit, until suddenly they had found themselves partners – the chieftain and the ambassador of their people.  They relied on each other, trusted each others' judgment, and treated each other with enormous respect; but it had not been until that moment where she startled all the breath out of his lungs by ducking her blonde head into his prison cell and holding out her hand that he realized how afraid he had been that he would never see her again, and what that fear really meant.

Abby was his family now, which meant Clarke was his family now too.

Marcus felt something crack open inside his chest, and before he knew what he was doing he had reached out and taken the knife from Clarke’s hand, slicing a red line through the center of his other palm before anyone could stop him.

Roan moved in closer, as though perplexed and displeased at this improvisation, and Abby said his name in a low worried voice.  But for just this one moment, he was not looking at Abby.

He was looking at Clarke, and Clarke knew.

She took the knife back, and to her mother’s astonishment, she cut open her own palm too.

“Ai laik yun nontu feva en otaim,” Marcus said to Clarke firmly, taking her hand in his and pressing it tightly, and a low rumbling of gasps and murmurs filled the room.

The Grounders did not have words for the complexities of familial relations they’d known on the Ark – “stepson,” “half-sister,” “father-in-law,” none of these words meant anything to them.  The words they used were simpler.  Maybe less precise, but purer somehow.  And he knew Clarke Griffin well enough to know that she would see no diminishing of Jake in this, that she would hear him and she would know.

“Ai laik yun nomfri feva en otaim,” she said back to him, pressing his hand in hers.  “Yu laik ain seingeda en ain hou.  Ai swega raun faya en jus.”

_I am your father forever and always._

_I am your daughter._

_You are my family and my home._

_I swear in fire and blood._

Roan's eyes were sharp and approving - it was a clever tactical maneuver, after all, publicly demonstrating to all of Ice Nation that the man who ruled over the Sky People's weapons of destruction was also the sworn father of Wanheda.  And perhaps, after all, that would be what the rest of the world would think.  But nobody here, in this room, at this moment, seeing the way this man looked down at this girl and the way the girl looked back up at him, would have believed either of them had done it as a tactical maneuver.

Clarke squeezed his hand once, quick and firm, before letting go, her eyes shining with a complex tangle of emotions that were difficult to read.  Roan took the knife back, binding up Marcus’ hands with the white cloth, and he turned back to Abby, about to make a quiet apology under his breath for going off script, but the look on her face stopped his heart.

It wasn’t just the tears streaking down her face that unstitched him so completely, or the way her mouth trembled like she wanted to speak but couldn't.  It was the way he had cut open his other hand to try and say something about what Clarke meant to him that he had been unable to put into words, and Abby had understood anyway.

He suddenly remembered the thing she had said to him last night, when he had been unable to stop thinking about her first marriage, the one where he had stood as witness at Jake Griffin’s side.  He had known her so little, then; she was the wife of his friend, but not really her own person yet.  That came much later, when they both joined the Council, and found themselves at perpetual odds.  But still, she had loved Jake Griffin, and she had been his wife for twenty years, and it was because of Marcus that Jake had died, and if you had asked Marcus Kane after that if Abby Griffin hated him, he would have answered yes without a moment’s hesitation.

All of those things were true, they remained true, they would always be true.  And yet somehow, astonishingly, here she was, with white paint on her skin and a crown on her head and her hands holding tightly to his, and he had traveled nine hundred miles and an entire lifetime to arrive at this moment where the entire world disappeared around him in a blur of faces and voices as he looked down at this tiny, invincible woman whose heart was so vast that there was room for both Jake and Marcus to stand inside of it together.   _“Hearts don’t work like that,”_ she had told him, and she was right, she _must_ have been right, because Marcus Kane was more sure of Abby Griffin’s love than he had ever been about anything else in his life.

So here they were, standing in front of the King of the Ice Nation, speaking words to each other in Trigedasleng which meant this was forever, which meant that the whole path of Marcus Kane’s life –  its tangle of light and shadow, joy and grief, sin and atonement – had always been leading here, to this place, to this moment, to this woman, which meant that all of it had been worth it.

He had locked and barred the door to his heart so long ago he could barely remember.  And yet Abby had simply opened the door and walked inside.

It had felt beyond comprehension for a man like him to aspire to a love like this.  She had loved him before he deserved it, loved him until he finally, finally believed that such impossible love was something a man like him could deserve.

“Ai ste shoun of Markus, Skaihefa, en Abi, Skaiplana!” announced Roan _(I present Marcus the Sky King and Abby the Sky Queen)._  The room burst into wild applause, but Marcus and Abby didn’t hear.

“Ai hod yu in, Haiplana,” he whispered to her, taking both her hands in his.

She smiled up at him, her eyes shining, and there it was, their future, bright and possible and right here in front of them, and there was nothing they could not face side-by-side.

“Ai hod yu in,” she said back to him.  “I love you too.”


End file.
